THEOLD 
 
 Allen 
 White
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK - BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 A VIEW OF AMERICAN 
 DEMOCRACY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE 
 
 H 
 AUTHOR OF "A CERTAIN RICH MAN," "IN OUR TOWN," 
 "STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS," ETC. 
 
 Ncfo ffork 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1910 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Copyright, 1910, 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1910. 
 
 NorhjDoli linss 
 
 J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick <fc Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 H 
 
 -) 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Our Democracy in the Beginning ... 1 
 
 II. How our Democracy became Modified . . 8 
 
 (v. III. The Beginnings of the Change .... 32 
 
 CM 
 
 IV. Certain Definite Tendencies .... 65 
 
 V. Progress in American Cities .... 97 
 
 VI. The Leaven in the National Lump . . . 131 
 
 VII. The Schools the Mainspring of Democracy . 169 
 
 Vm. The Courts the Checks of Democracy . . 197 
 
 IX. A Look Ahead 230 
 
 Appendix 255 
 
 42y735
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OUB DEMOCKACY IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 Any view of a going concern, like our American 
 democracy, inevitably must be a partial view, be- 
 cause it must be a fleeting one. The facts about 
 our democracy to-day obviously are not the facts 
 of yesterday, nor are they the facts of to-morrow. 
 The democracy in the United States which De 
 Tocqueville saw in the early part of the nineteenth 
 century is not the American democracy rising to 
 power in the twentieth century. Perhaps, indeed, we 
 did not have a democracy at all during the early 
 decades of the nineteenth century. Certainly that 
 democracy passed into the more typical republican 
 form of government during the middle and latter 
 decades of the century. And it seems likely that we 
 are about to revert (or progress, if you would choose 
 that verb) from the republican form under which our 
 nation waxed fat and strong after the Civil War,
 
 2 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 to another form — a form participated in more 
 largely than ever before by the voter, a form more 
 zealous for the rights, of the individual, and a form 
 more directly guided by the masses — government 
 "of the people, for the people, by the people." 
 
 We are a different nation from that which De 
 Tocqueville saw when he visited us nearly one 
 hundred years ago. We have a different government, 
 though our Constitution has not been changed, fun- 
 damentally, from that of the government which he 
 saw. We live on a different economic basis than 
 that which sustained us in the twenties and thirties 
 of the last century. And our social organization 
 has been improved since the days of the fathers of 
 the Republic. A century ago our politicians 
 and statesmen dwelt apart from the people. Alex- 
 ander Hamilton longed for a House of Lords. 
 Fancy a statesman yearning for such an institution 
 now! The education of the masses was neglected. 
 Schooling was difficult compared with the present 
 facility for obtaining education. Leaders seemed 
 to lead in that day. Now they trail at least a bien- 
 nium behind the people. Americans were isolated 
 and more or less queer when De Tocqueville saw us. 
 The world is a snug little community now, with opin- 
 ions about the inhabitants of Mars. The big house
 
 OUR DEMOCRACY IN THE BEGINNING 3 
 
 on the hill, of our grandfathers, to-day is duplicated, 
 where it is not vastly improved, all over the valley. 
 We, the ordinary run of people in these latter days, 
 enjoy comforts that were denied to the rich in Andrew 
 Jackson's day. Hours of labor are shortened for 
 those who work. The physical strain of the workers 
 also has been greatly relieved in the passing century. 
 The attitude of master and servant has been revo- 
 lutionized. Brotherhood is abroad in the land. 
 There has been an immense magnifying of the human 
 being, since Hamilton's time; and this too despite the 
 fact that all the little home factories are gone where 
 men and women worked alone, and in their places are 
 the great factories where men work by the thousands. 
 But the worker by the thousands has the power of the 
 sympathy of the thousands behind him. He may not 
 be treated with contumely. In the old democracy 
 of Jefferson's dream God sat on a golden throne on 
 some distant orb, ruling the universe like an exalted 
 Frederick the Great. To-day God is moving in the 
 hearts of men; the kingdom of Heaven is within us. 
 Yet De Tocqueville called that elder civilization a de- 
 mocracy. And to-day we believe that we are coming 
 into another democracy. The two — politically, eco- 
 nomically, and socially — are almost utterly dissim- 
 ilar. Something has intervened. Something has
 
 4 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 come into life, not only in America, but all over civili- 
 zation, within a hundred years, that has changed the 
 aspect of humanity. Something has given political 
 control to the masses; something has given them 
 shorter hours of work than they ever had before; 
 more education than they ever had before; more com- 
 forts than they ever had before; more self-respect than 
 they ever had before; more deep-set practical work- 
 ing-clothes — faith in the Fatherhood of God and the 
 Brotherhood of man. Perhaps it is the vast savings 
 of the people; certainly we have billions now for our 
 millions of one hundred years ago. Have we bought 
 all these blessings with hard cash? We are a thrifty 
 people. We have grown capital — we ordinary every- 
 day people — by the billions. The wealth of the 
 country is our savings — whoever may happen to 
 hold the title for the moment. Perhaps with our 
 savings we have bought all these political, social, and 
 economic comforts and luxuries. But how did we 
 manage to save? What has given the democracy of 
 the twentieth century such an enormous store of cap- 
 ital, as evidenced in our national wealth, compared 
 with the old democracy of the fathers. They worked 
 more hours, wore homespun clothes, bought few books, 
 had few amusements, lived in primitive simplicity; 
 certainly they should have saved more. Yet we are
 
 OUR DEMOCRACY IN THE BEGINNING 5 
 
 richer, man for man, than they were. Something 
 happened during the half century after De Tocque- 
 ville left us and before Mr. Bryce came back and 
 wrote his " American Commonwealth." It revolu- 
 tionized us. It was some great force — elemental, 
 dynamic. 
 
 The force was st eam — t he thing that happened 
 was the common use of steam. The nineteenth 
 century will be known as the century made 
 marvelous by the use of steam. Steam lightened 
 the strain on human muscles; soon the hours of 
 labor were shortened. The workingman got more 
 daylight in which to look about and see how the 
 world is put together. With leisure came reflection, 
 with reflection came opinions, with opinions came re- 
 volt against the inequalities of men, and with that 
 revolt modern democracy is coming. That was the 
 social and the moral side of the discovery of the uses 
 of steam. It had its material and economic side also. 
 Steam annihilated distance, fostered understanding 
 between men, set them in good houses, fed them 
 nourishing food, made men of them. It multiplied 
 their thrift ten and a hundred fold, and while it 
 made them men, — democratic men, — it put their 
 accumulated savings into the hands of trustees who 
 became the masters of men. The use of steam stored
 
 6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 up either as savings or as profits such colossal sums 
 of capital as mankind never before had dreamed of. 
 The savings and the profits of the multitude were 
 trusted to the servants of the multitude — to the men 
 with ten talents, who increased the savings fabulously. 
 These servants had a power like that of rulers. They 
 were rulers while they remained servants. But they 
 were servants, not of the whole man whom they 
 served, but only of his selfish faculties. The capi- 
 talist took the color of his master. He grew hard 
 and grasping. Capital became a synonym for greed ; 
 the development was natural. Yet capital was not 
 principally of the rich; it was the common hoard, 
 the savings and profits of the whole people. So cap- 
 italism — its virtues and its vices are not the virtues 
 and vices of a class (not of the rich, for instance), but 
 capitalism is a part of the public character, a part of 
 the American character in its relation to this people 
 and this government. And when, in the chapters 
 that are to follow hereinafter, one sees the struggle 
 between democracy and capital, it must not be con- 
 ceived to mean a struggle between the rich and the 
 poor, but it must be recognized as a struggle in every 
 man's heart between the unselfish and the selfish in- 
 stincts of his nature for supremacy. Dernocracy„ is 
 struggling for the rights of man against the rights of
 
 OUR DEMOCRACY IN THE BEGINNING 7 
 
 property. The rich man often is democratic; the 
 poor man, sometimes intensely selfish. It is not a 
 struggle of classes, not in America; it is a contest in 
 the heart of the common people. We are trying to 
 do justice under new conditions in the world — con- 
 ditions arising from the stupendous changes wrought 
 to humanity by the use of steam. We are trying, as 
 it were, to digest in our social organism this new apple 
 of the knowledge of good and evil. We are trying to 
 socialize steam, to make its results and achievements 
 a part of an equitable existence — an existence con- 
 sistent with "good will among men." 
 
 And this book will try to tell, not in the language 
 of a trained scientist, but in the words of an observer 
 in the midst of the life that now is, something about 
 the present status of society in America. It is an 
 effort to tell how the man whom steam has educated, 
 fed, housed, clad, given leisure and vision, the com- 
 mon man, rich or poor, is fighting with the weapons 
 of fundamental democracy against the forces and 
 instincts in his own soul which make for greed and 
 oppression and misery in this land of ours. We have 
 here a combat of the opposing forces formed by a new 
 social substance: whose basic elements, democracy 
 and capital (each useful in its own way), were released 
 to the world in steam.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 
 
 "I am glad," said an Englishman as he walked 
 down the gang plank of an ocean liner into the United 
 States, "that I am now in a country where you can 
 buy men only with money. ' ' We Americans clearly do 
 not realize our felicity. And yet, when one considers 
 what a large number of things have moved men to 
 wrong in other times and in other lands, one should 
 count one's blessings and not his ills. Of course the 
 devil is not in chains in this country. That fact is 
 discouraging when one remembers that we have been 
 organized to chain him for something over a hundred 
 years. But on the other hand, we have a shackle on 
 his ankle and a few links forged — and that is some- 
 thing. 
 
 Of old, men were controlled by the lure of women, 
 by the fear of hell fire, by the envy of social distinc- 
 tion, and by greed. In America at least, and speaking 
 broadly, allowing for many exceptions, our politics 
 and our business are not seriously affected by the 
 siren, by the priest, or by the nobility. We have
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 9 
 
 welded that much of a chain for the devil. We have 
 reduced his activity to greed. But the drawback is 
 this : we have lost somewhat of finesse, somewhat of 
 spirituality, by throwing off considerations of eccle- 
 siasticism and of feudalism. For democracy is crass, 
 and the very palpableness of the thing that moves us 
 must in its nature keep democracy crass and ugly 
 and brutal so long as we are guided chiefly by greed. 
 
 If the rich man votes only for the return of pros- 
 perity, and the poor man votes only for the full din- 
 ner pail, neither should by surprised if the other tries 
 
 to rob him. For until the devil is chained he cer- 
 
 tainly will get the hindermost! If we vote only for 
 material things, we shall get only material things. 
 The man who coddles his stomach generally has a 
 weak heart — likewise the nation. But with this 
 nation of ours the most hopeful sign of the times is 
 that we are beginning to get a national sense of our 
 ailment. All doctors agree that it is the stomach 
 and not the heart or the head of this people that is 
 wrong. There are hundreds of panaceas and sure 
 cures, but all of them aim at the same disease. In 
 the presidential campaign of 1908 the Republicans, 
 the Socialists, the Democrats, and the Prohibitionists 
 proclaimed almost in unison against the extension of 
 special privileges, — which extension is merely legaliz-
 
 10 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 ing greed, and chiefly corporate greed. It was a 
 clearly denned struggle between the contending 
 forces in civilization released by steam: democ- 
 racy and capital. 
 
 Therefore it would seem that in a hundred years of 
 active life the American people have reduced the fight 
 for social, economic, and political progress to its 
 fundamental terms. There was greed in ecclesiasti- 
 cism, but it was tinctured with fear. There was greed 
 in feudalism, but it was alloyed with the "divinity 
 that doth hedge a king" or a baron or a lord or a 
 knight or what not of social tomfoolery. But the 
 greed contending with democracy is simple, primitive, 
 without sugar coating, and with nothing more sub- 
 stantial to hide it than mere shallow business tradition. 
 The church has been business; the state has been 
 business; the nobility has been business; but now, 
 thank heaven! only business is business. And the 
 problem of democracy in this world seems to be to 
 make business honest. 
 
 Now all this might seem obvious if as a nation we 
 did not have our noses in our work. For a man with 
 his nose in his work understands its details, but some- 
 times he is unfamiliar with its general effect. There- 
 fore, to know what we are really doing in this country, 
 and to appreciate what reasonably we may hope to do,
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 11 
 
 it is necessary to back off a dozen years or so and get 
 a good look, from that perspective, at what we have 
 done. And this historical view — if such a view may 
 be had by going back little more than a decade — 
 must not discourage the reader, no matter how un- 
 pleasant the picture may be. For it now has only an 
 academic interest. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago — more or less — an extra- 
 constitutional government began to take charge of 
 this country. It extended its domain over the states 
 gradually from east to west. This superficial gov- 
 ernment did not cover the entire country until the 
 late nineties. But from 1897 to 1903 it was domi- 
 nant, and probably in many matters it was superior to 
 the constitutional government. There was the con- 
 stitutional government and the business government 
 in the city, in the county — where county organiza- 
 tions prevailed, — in the state and in the nation. 
 The constitutional government generally provided 
 for the punishment of crimes of violence, whether 
 against the person or against property. The bur- 
 glar, the petty thief, the cheap swindler, the mur- 
 derer, the highwayman, the thug, — if he did not 
 operate at the polls, — the barnburner, the rioter, the 
 forger, the counterfeiter, the vagrant, and the common 
 liar found themselves facing the written law. But
 
 12 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 certain crimes of cunning, if capital invested was suffi- 
 ciently large, were protected by the superficial govern- 
 ment. Perhaps to be entirely safe one should say 
 that the protected crimes of cunning were those crimes 
 aimed not at private property so much as at public 
 rights; protection was not offered to those who 
 swindled individuals. But those who in the name of 
 the industrial and commercial progress of the land 
 took what was not their own from the public, or those 
 who assumed to add to the national production and 
 accumulation of wealth, — to increase American cap- 
 ital, in short, — they came under the jurisdiction of the 
 superficial government and too frequently they were 
 immune from the constitutional government De- 
 mocracy seemed to maintain its government, punish- 
 ing crimes committed by individuals against indi- 
 viduals; and capital maintained its government to 
 protect capital in its crimes against the public. 
 
 Finally the decisions of the courts were colored in 
 
 / favor of those who enjoyed special privileges until 
 
 the special privileges became vested rights, and thus 
 
 specially privileged classes captured the Constitution. 
 
 Then the two governments merged. 
 
 For those who enjoyed special privileges in the in- 
 vestment of their capital, — franchises, public grants, 
 and the like, — laws were enacted, interpreted, and
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 13 
 
 administered. But the public executives and legisla- 
 tors and courts were not consciously or maliciously 
 venal, — not in the least. They were merely follow- 
 ing the spirit of the times. There was one jurisdic- 
 tion for private business and quite another for the 
 public business. And when little by little the alliance 
 was established between business and politics, — 
 between capital and democracy, — the two govern- 
 ments were cemented in the customs and traditions 
 of the people. 
 
 Stories differ as to how this alliance was formed. 
 There are those who believe that it was projected 
 deliberately and with malice prepense by a group of 
 business men operating in public service corporations. 
 But it seems reasonable as well as just to believe 
 that ignorance and prejudice produced demagogues 
 in the days following the Civil War, and that business 
 went into politics in self-defense. But when business 
 got into politics, it found that a dollar invested in a 
 campaign fund brought on the whole more direct 
 results than any other dollar that might be invested — 
 up to a certain maximum of investment. So money 
 went into politics with all the precision and caution 
 that always has directed money in any of its activities. 
 
 And this was the way money went into politics: 
 The party system had built a machirie made for the
 
 14 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 uses of corruption in those days of the eighties and 
 nineties. Candidates for all offices, legislative, ju- 
 dicial, and executive, got their elections and appoint- 
 ments from the party organizations. The apathy 
 of voters made party success more or less dependent 
 upon getting all the voters to the polls, and money 
 became necessary to hire carriages and workers to 
 bring voters to the polls, who would vote presumably 
 for the political organization that brought them there. 
 Also campaign speakers had to travel about the 
 country, literature had to be distributed to convince 
 the voters of the justice of a party's claims to the 
 voter's support. 
 
 These were legitimate uses of money. For such 
 purposes as these any honest politician might ask any 
 honest business man for campaign contributions. 
 But from the honest uses of money in politics grew the 
 illegitimate uses of money. Hiring a man to work 
 at the polls shaded gently into hiring him to vote for 
 the party that paid him for his work. The expenses 
 of campaign speakers gradually grew and included 
 pay for personal influence, and the fund used for 
 printing literature to convince the voters became 
 enlarged to pay for subsidized newspapers, and to 
 corrupt the channels of publicity in various ways. 
 Through the party organization money got into poli-
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 15 
 
 tics in a systematic and altogether a comfortable 
 manner. There was no need of individual bribery; 
 there was no scandal attached to the purchase of 
 special privileges. The purchase of a party organiza- 
 tion in a city or a state or a nation became so brazen 
 that men thought it was clean. Did a brewer desire 
 his beer sold in the dives and saloons of a certain city 
 to the exclusion of other brews? Well and good, — 
 he contributed sufficient funds to the party organiza- 
 tion of the dominant party in that city to "control" 
 it; that is to say, he made the best bid. So when 
 a public prosecutor was elected by that party, he 
 harried the users of the rival brews until they bought 
 only the administration brand of beer, and then they 
 were unmolested. Did a street railway desire a city 
 franchise, it gave money to the dominant party in the 
 city, or if there was any doubt about the election, the 
 franchise seeker contributed money to both parties in 
 the city where he desired to loot. After the election 
 had been won with the would-be looter's money, the 
 granting of the franchise to the benevolent looter 
 became an administration policy. The man who op- 
 posed the franchise was a political outcast. Did a 
 railroad desire immunity from annoying enforcement 
 of laws enacted to satisfy public clamor in any state, 
 it contributed money to the party controlling that
 
 16 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 state, and railroad commissioners were appointed at 
 the suggestion of the lawyers for the railroad. 
 
 It was but a natural step in the growth of the po- 
 litical organism, for the attorneys of all the railroads 
 in a given state to come to a gentlemen's agreement 
 about the politics of the state. Moreover, it was 
 merely growth by accretion that the attorneys for the 
 brewers and the packing houses and the insurance 
 companies and the text-book publishers united with 
 the railroad attorneys, thereby building up in each 
 state a community of interests. Often this commu- 
 nity of interests was erected around one man; and 
 generally he was not even chairman of the local party 
 organization. He was the man who controlled the 
 party chairman; the party chairman and the gov- 
 ernor and the speaker of the lower house in the legis- 
 lature and the leader in the upper house were merely 
 parts of the machine. The boss put the parts to- 
 gether. He was the god from the machine. And 
 the machine gave direction to affairs in the state. 1 
 
 1 In the New York insurance investigation of November 16, 
 1905, we find B. B. Odell testifying concerning certain insurance 
 legislation : 
 
 " Q. You have said that you told Mr. Hyde that there would 
 be no such legislation as suggested by the Ambler bill ? 
 
 " A. In my opinion. 
 
 "Q. How could you control that? 
 
 " A. I could not.
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 17 
 
 Thus the state party organization became the super- 
 ficial government — the government of greedy capi- 
 tal enjoying special privileges, lawful and unlawful. 
 Public officials, recognizing the force of the machine 
 in which they were working, rarely turned against it. 
 
 Now it is not pleasant to recall American political 
 conditions as they were in the late nineties. Yet 
 those conditions were founded so firmly on local 
 public sentiment and represented so thoroughly the 
 judgment of the average man, that — bad as they 
 were — it becomes necessary to the uses of this dis- 
 cussion to record them here briefly. For those con- 
 ditions furnish a starting point in the story of recent 
 progress in this country, and only as we take a square 
 look at the place where things were at their worst, 
 may we realize how much better they have grown. 
 
 Politics in America a dozen or fifteen years ago was 
 founded upon the boss system. At the bottom, in the 
 smallest political unit, was the precinct boss. Dele- 
 gates to local party conventions were elected from 
 precincts or wards or townships. 
 
 "Q. How could you in any way promise him immunity from 
 action of that kind on the part of the members of the legislature ? 
 
 " A. Only from my knowledge and experience in the legisla- 
 ture. 
 
 "Q. That was from your familiarity with the situation? 
 
 "A. Yes." 
 
 When money went into politics it went there to protect property, 
 o
 
 18 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 The party convention in a county, town, or city 
 was made up of from two to four hundred of such dele- 
 gates. They nominated the local county, township, 
 ward or city candidates for the offices that composed 
 the local government. Generally county governments 
 prevailed in rural communities in the West, in the 
 Middle states, and in the South. The precinct boss 
 at the bottom of the system generally said who should 
 go to the county, town, or city convention as delegates. 
 And in any precinct of two hundred votes or such a 
 matter, not over fifty people in either party paid 
 serious attention to politics. And year after year the 
 same men represented each precinct in the local 
 convention. They were the men who obeyed the 
 dominant precinct boss at the base of things. He 
 was not an officer of the government, but he con- 
 trolled delegates to local conventions which nomi- 
 nated candidates for all the offices of the local gov- 
 ernment, so he became an actual part of the local 
 government of every community. Half a dozen 
 precinct bosses controlled the average county or 
 small city. And the indomitable man among them 
 controlled them. 
 
 This indomitable local boss had relations with the 
 group of bosses that controlled the district or the 
 great city. He was one of them. He controlled the
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 19 
 
 larger group if he was strong enough. And he had 
 relations with the still more powerful group of bosses 
 that controlled the state conventions and state legis- 
 latures of his party. If he was one of the larger groups, 
 he was powerful enough to say who should be nomi- 
 nated for the legislature in his county, who should 
 have the judicial and congressional nominations in his 
 district, and who should attend the state convention 
 as delegates to name the candidates for state office. 
 His nose was above water. He had a status in the 
 politics of his state. He was some one. Sometimes 
 he was a member of the actual organization of his 
 party; at other times he preferred to name those who 
 should be members. But always he controlled; and 
 the fifty men in either party in each precinct who paid 
 intelligent attention to politics, together with the 
 fifty men in each of a score of other precincts in the 
 town or city, knew this high-grade boss, went to him 
 for favors, considered him as the vicegerent between 
 them and the big boss who controlled the group of 
 bosses in the inner temple that controlled the state. 
 The extra-constitutional place of the boss in gov- 
 ernment was as the extra-constitutional guardian of 
 business. If a telephone company desired to put its 
 poles in the street, and the city council objected, 
 straightway went the owner of the telephone stock to
 
 20 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 the boss. He straightened matters out. If a street 
 car company was having trouble with the city street 
 department, the manager of the street railway went to 
 the boss, and the street department became reason- 
 able. If the water company was harassed by public 
 litigation, the boss arranged a friendly suit to settle 
 matters. Always business was considered. And in 
 some exceptional cases, vice was considered business. 
 That was because vice paid rent, and property in- 
 terests could not be disturbed. The boss, little or big, 
 had the greatest respect for business little or big. And 
 this respect came to him not as a peculiar revelation, — 
 and perhaps not chiefly because business paid money 
 to politics, — but because he realized that all of the 
 people about him felt as he felt. He merely reflected 
 his environment. Otherwise more than fifty people 
 would consider the little precinct boss obnoxious, 
 and he would lose control, and a different group would 
 conduct the public business of the precinct. So the 
 secondary boss — the town or county boss — saw 
 that local business was not hampered ; and when the 
 railroad company in the state desired to do as it 
 pleased, the boss of the secondary bosses protected 
 the railroad. And the people protected the bosses, 
 and business big and little paid money into the party 
 committees; and as the bosses controlled the com-
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 21 
 
 mittees the sale of special privilege was simple, legal, 
 and unquestioned. Money in politics was there for 
 the purpose of protecting the rights of property 
 under the law, as against the rights of men. So 
 prosperity dwelt among the people. The greed of 
 capital was rampant, the force of democracy was 
 dormant; "and the fool said in his heart there is no 
 God." 
 
 But the folly grew national. Railroads, being the 
 most important public service corporations in any 
 state, had the closest relations with the state bosses 
 who controlled members of the legislature, so the legal 
 departments of the railroads named United States 
 senators. In those days in many of the states a can- 
 didate for United States senator usually went to the 
 law departments of the railroads in his state, and made 
 his peace. Otherwise he was defeated. Now, man is 
 a grateful brute, and when federal judges were to be 
 named the law departments of the railroads generally 
 had a judicial candidate in view. And the senator 
 whose business it is to nominate federal judges for the 
 President of the United States to appoint, subject 
 to the Senate's confirmation, generally chose the man 
 who was satisfactory to the powers in his state that 
 made him senator. And as there are two sides to 
 every lawsuit, whenever the interests of the public
 
 22 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 and the interests of the railroad clashed in court, it 
 was as easy to see the railroad's side as it was to see 
 the other side, so the mass of federal decisions for 
 years favored the railroads. And thus the superficial 
 government, in a most natural way, captured the 
 Constitution. 
 
 (In parentheses here it seems necessary to inquire 
 if this capture of the Constitution by our only aris- 
 tocracy — that of capital — was not in truth merely 
 a recapture of what was intended in the beginning by 
 the fathers to belong to the minority. 1 The checks 
 and balances put in that Constitution to guard against 
 the rule of the majority protected slavery for fifty 
 years, and perhaps they bound the nation to the 
 rule of the privileged classes in the nineties. Per- 
 haps these same checks and balances were put into 
 the Constitution deliberately — the judiciary which 
 vetoes statutes and remakes laws, the rigidity-of the 
 fundamental law to amendment, the remoteness of 
 the senators from popular election and control. 
 
 Certainly these checks and balances are charing us 
 now in our struggle to express the widening moral 
 intelligence of a democracy in terms of government. 
 And later it will be necessary to return to this conjec- 
 
 1 See "The Spirit of American Government," by Professor J. A. 
 Smith. Macmillan.
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 23 
 
 ture and examine it in greater detail. But the query 
 in parentheses should at least be set down here for 
 what it is worth.) 
 
 The courts were not corrupt. They were merely 
 human. The people desired business protected. The 
 color of the times crocked and the judges got it on 
 their spectacles. They were not to blame. They 
 merely saw as we all saw in those times. For politics 
 was _ no worse than business; and business was no 
 better than the people who did the trading. And 
 while the country was honest, it had been through a 
 serious, biting, world-wide panic — the great panic of 
 1893. So prosperity seemed the chief end of man. 
 The prosperity ideal occupied the mind of a nation. 
 Every man was willing to yield just a little bit for the 
 larger good of a prosperous nation. And all this 
 yielding made a mighty slant in the line of probity 
 when each man, among seventy millions of people, 
 bent ever so slightly to it. And that is why those at 
 the top, as we looked up and saw them fall, seemed so 
 much more out of plumb than we were at the bottom. 
 But in fact they were at the same angle with relation 
 to exact honesty that we all were. Big bosses and 
 little bosses, big business men and little business men, 
 we were all tarred by the same stick. It was a case of 
 stretching the general welfare clause of the federal
 
 24 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 Constitution to a bad end, which at the time seemed 
 worthy. 
 
 Now, here is what may be called a secondary stage 
 of the disease that was creeping upon the people. 
 From 1884 to 1894 there were clean cities and clean 
 states; on the whole there was a clean federal govern- 
 ment, and certainly the great mass of business trans- 
 actions were clean. Evils were sporadic, local, and 
 not of first importance. Then came Mark Hanna, 
 the maker of a President. Under Hanna the king's 
 evil of business in politics became chronic in the 
 politics of the nation. He organized the state bosses 
 and thereby organized the public service business of 
 the country and the public service politics of the coun- 
 try; he brought capital and democracy together, 
 and became the dictator of the superficial government 
 of the United States. But for the strength of Mc- 
 Kinley, Hanna would have become an autocrat. In 
 him were united the greedy forces of business and the 
 greedy forces of politics. For putting America 
 thoroughly upon a business basis, the country owes 
 to Hanna whatever gratitude is due a man who brings 
 out the rash, makes the impurities plain, and aids 
 diagnosis. 
 
 Those were the good old times of business cheer in 
 the reign of Hanna. The knighthood of commercial
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 25 
 
 license was in flower then. Hanna gathered tribute 
 from certain great business concerns desiring protec- 
 tion and privilege in the government, and sent the 
 money from the national central committee of his 
 party to the various state central committees of his 
 party, and they, in turn, sent it to the county com- 
 mittees and district committees and city committees 
 of his party. Incidentally the local committees kept 
 on levying upon such persons and corporations at 
 home as seemed to be fair prey. But local levies and 
 assessments were insignificant. The fountain of all 
 public corruption came from above. The national 
 committees of both great parties organized the sale 
 of commercial indulgences into a fine art. One was 
 as bad as the other, save that the Republicans offered 
 much the better market. 
 
 So certain insurance trustees used the money of 
 their trusts for personal gain; certain railroad offi- 
 cials shared in the profits of favored concerns; re- 
 bates were granted to shippers and special rates to 
 localities ; import tariffs were made to build up private 
 business; the stocks and bonds of railroads and other 
 public service corporations were increased illegiti- 
 mately, and the people were taxed to pay dividends 
 on fictitious capitalization and interest on fraudulent 
 debts. Corporations were formed under the protec-
 
 26 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 tion of the state, and the sole business of these corpo- 
 rations was to levy tribute from the people of the 
 state that protected them; morals in high finance 
 became archaic in certain altitudes, and the success 
 of success in a few restricted areas of business became 
 its moral and its legal justification. 
 
 It should not be necessary, yet it is only just, to say 
 that the area of dishonesty in business and even in 
 politics was not wide — though it was important. 
 The great bulk of business was honestly conducted, 
 and the vast majority of men in politics were above 
 reproach. And even those who did wrong for the 
 most part did it unwittingly. The sin of Hanna was 
 not a specific intentional debasement of our politics 
 and corruption of our business. He did what he 
 did by his example, by his influence, by his point of 
 view. With him, in all sincerity and in all candor, 
 business was the most important consideration, and 
 prosperity for the nation was the one end and aim in 
 his soul. He saw that prosperity threatened in the 
 campaign of 1896 by the free silver craze. He fought 
 that craze with entire propriety ; he fought for busi- 
 ness stability with the utmost sincerity and with all 
 good will; he won that fight, and it was the most 
 natural thing in the world that he should consider 
 business stability an end rather than a means of
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 27 
 
 national happiness. He was our most picturesque 
 national leader in those days. McKinley was never 
 dramatized as the hero of the play. He was what 
 dramatists might call the "walking gentleman" — 
 strong, of course ; honest, certainly, but not the hero of 
 the times. Hanna was the man in the public eye. He 
 was the man who bade men come and go at his beck 
 and call. He was the boss of the bosses, and, as the 
 ruler of the superficial government, Hanna guarded 
 business; McKinley as the head of the constitutional 
 government preserved the traditional Constitution. 
 One was the ruler of, by, and for capital; the other 
 represented democracy. The egoistic forces of steam 
 were throbbing vigorously through the nation, but 
 the altruistic atoms were not losing force. They 
 were gathering strength. 
 
 In those days as United States senators for the 
 most part truckled to Hanna, and as the United States 
 senators had the real choice of federal officials, es- 
 pecially of federal judges and officers of the federal 
 courts, the United States Senate became the organ, — 
 not of the traditional constitutional government, but 
 of the real government, the merged government of 
 money and men. And courts — judges, marshals, 
 prosecutors, and clerks of the courts and various arms 
 of the law — unconsciously took the color of Hanna's
 
 28 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 cast of thought. They gave allegiance to the court 
 of Hanna and prosperity, rather than to McKinley 
 and the people. So district attorneys in the days of 
 Hanna were not bringing stock manipulators to the 
 bar of justice; judges were not instructing grand 
 juries to probe into crooked railroad management; 
 United States marshals were not laying information 
 before the courts of the crimes of the trusts. For to 
 do those things would arrest prosperity. And pros- 
 perity was the god of the superficial government of 
 the times. Business was above the written law of 
 those days. 
 
 And no one was to blame more than the people 
 themselves. They got exactly the kind of a govern- 
 ment they desired. The flexibility of our Constitu- 
 tion was never more admirably presented to the world 
 than it was in the days of Hanna. Public sentiment 
 governed, and the great mass of the American people 
 sincerely upheld the government of Hanna without 
 questioning its divine right to administer the affairs 
 of this country. For if the Democratic party had 
 won in the election of 1900, it would have been ex- 
 pected to follow in Hanna's footsteps, to maintain 
 prosperity at any cost, and to protect business. For 
 we were a money-mad nation. And when stocks 
 and reputations began to shrink in 1903, when great
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 29 
 
 concerns began to totter and their heads to die of 
 shame, as they met a broadened public conscience, it 
 is miserably sad that we should all not have suffered 
 with those in high places, for we were as much to blame 
 as they were. They merely epitomized success as we 
 considered it. They were our models, and our su- 
 perior virtue was an afterthought — a result perhaps 
 of our failure to attain their heights, or at least to 
 meet their temptations. They suffered, we jeered, 
 and God judged. 
 
 But now conditions are changing. Even when 
 the knighthood of business was in flower there was 
 the worm in the bud. There was the Spanish War. 
 The spirit of sacrifice overcame the spirit of commer- 
 cialism. Hanna lost control; the country declared 
 war, and after waiting to prepare for it as best he could 
 McKinley proclaimed it. The retention of the 
 Philippines, which followed war, offended some of the 
 quicker and more enlightened consciences of the 
 people; but the crowd-conscience of the nation saw 
 with a deep subconscious wisdom of national genius 
 that if we could learn to sacrifice our own interest for 
 those of a weaker people, we would learn the lesson 
 needed to solve the great problem of democracy — 
 to check our national greed and to make business 
 honest. For business may not be madejhonest by
 
 30 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 vicarious sacrifice, but only as each man is willing to 
 sacrifice himself. The problem of democracy is at 
 base the problem of individual self-sacrifice coming 
 from individual good will. We cannot hope to social- 
 ize the forces of steam in our civilization until we 
 control and socialize ourselves. 
 
 And now for ten years there has been a distinct 
 movement among the American people, — feeble and 
 imperceptible against the current during the first few 
 years of its beginning, — a movement which indicates 
 that in the soul of the people there is a conviction of 
 their past unrighteousness. During the recent years 
 last past that movement has been unmistakable. 
 It is now one of the big self-evident things in our 
 national life. It is called variously : Reform, the Moral 
 Awakening, the New Idea, the Square Deal, the Up- 
 lift, Insurgency, and by other local cognomens; but 
 it is one current in the thought of the people. And 
 the most hopeful sign of the times lies in the fact that 
 the current is almost world-wide. The same striving 
 to lift men to higher things, to fuller enjoyment of the 
 fruits of our civilization, to a wider participation in 
 the blessings of modern society — in short, to " a more 
 abundant life" — the same striving is felt through 
 Europe and among the islands of the sea that is 
 tightening the muscles of our social and commercial
 
 HOW OUR DEMOCRACY BECAME MODIFIED 31 
 
 and political body. And it may be worth while to 
 look about us and note the changes that are coming 
 to us in the days when they are in the making. For 
 
 " The old order changeth, yielding place to new; 
 And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 
 
 There seems to be a persistent instinct in man to 
 grow spiritually. The missing links between the 
 protista and the elephant do not disprove that a chain 
 joined them once; but there are so many missing links 
 — links which are not now growing across the gaps 
 and which in the memory of man never have grown — 
 that the assumption of the chain's existence is only as 
 strong as the evidently broken chain that lies along 
 the field of human knowledge wherein science is bur- 
 rowing in geology, biology, embryology, and Heaven 
 knows what other ologies and isms. But we do know 
 that after the chain has reached man it is an unbroken 
 chain. We do know that men grow. The chain be- 
 tween the bushman and the President of Harvard 
 University we can find, and we may see all of its links. 
 What is more, we can feel the pull of it in a score of 
 human institutions. 
 
 It is demonstrable that the growth of man is gov- 
 erned by two strong tendencies — that to help himself, 
 and that to help others; we call these tendencies 
 
 32
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 33 
 
 selfishness and altruism, self-preservation and group- 
 preservation. And we know that the growth of a 
 people is measured by the scope of the group which 
 the average man in it is disposed to consider as part 
 of his individual concern. As inventions have 
 lightened the burdens of men, the sympathies of men 
 have widened. The savage discovered the uses of 
 fire and acquired a family. He invented a wheel 
 and organized a clan. Yet he was little better than 
 a savage. When he had fires and wheels and levers 
 he had faith enough in his fellows to get along with 
 them in a tribe. He was well along on the highway 
 to progress. Writing spread human sympathy from 
 the tribe to the state, and man began to be civilized. 
 Steam widened the scope of human brotherhood from 
 the state to the confederation of states and gave us 
 civilization of the modern type. Of course this 
 national feeling will extend itself. But now only the 
 picked members of any nation transcend its bound- 
 aries in their love of kind and extend it to humanity 
 without regard to race or color or nation or state or 
 tribe or clan or family. Yet until life comes to that, 
 fundamental democracy in this world will not have 
 reached its growth. 
 
 We like to think in America that we are a demo- 
 cratic people. We point to our Declaration of Inde-
 
 34 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 pendence as a great democratic document, a s_ it is ; 
 yet our weakness as a nation is that we have allowed 
 the Declaration to remain a mere declaration, while we 
 have operated our nation under a constitution which 
 puts checks upon democracy at every turn. Democ- 
 racy has gone this far: that the average citizen is 
 willing to admit that he is as good as any one else, 
 unless the other man be exceedingly rich. But the 
 average man is not instinctively willing to admit that 
 every one else is entitled to every opportunity before 
 the law that he has. So our democracy is not full- 
 grown. But it is growing. The instinct for growth 
 seems to abide with this nation. In the battle be- 
 tween the Declaration of Independence on the one 
 hand which declares that we are all equal (and ob- 
 viously means that all men have a right to display 
 their inequalities), and on the other hand the Con- 
 stitution which annuls the Declaration by its checks 
 on the majority, there is a strong movement among 
 the people toward the Declaration and away from the 
 Constitution. It__is unconscious, of course. The 
 Constitution still remains a political god of great 
 power, and the checks and balances still are regarded 
 as divinely appointed. But nevertheless Americans 
 are drifting toward democracy and the Declaration, 
 and away from the financial oligarchy protected by
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 35 
 
 the Constitution. Steam, that made our nation pos- 
 sible, is slowly adjusting itself to our life — gradually 
 becoming socially digested. And it is worth while 
 to note how far the drift toward democracy has carried 
 us in the last quarter of a century. 
 
 It is difficult to say of any current just where it 
 begins to turn. This is especially true of a current 
 in human affairs. Beginnings are so small, and 
 growth is so slow, that it is empirical to declare that in 
 the early nineties in America the tendency to democ- 
 racy began which is now so obvious in our politics. 
 But it is likely that one of the early manifestations 
 s^\ o f dem ocratic growth in America began with the 
 adoption of the secret ballot. The secret ballot is 
 one of the first shackles that democracy put upon 
 capital by abolishing direct bribery as a factor in 
 American politics. The bribery which remains, even 
 in our great cities, and in our rotten boroughs on the 
 Atlantic seaboard, is negligible in the total vote of 
 the nation. And similarly the direct bribery of public 
 servants is a negligible force for unrighteousness. 
 The people and their servants made a mighty gain 
 over money in politics and for democracy when they 
 established the secret ballot, because money invested 
 in politics is invested to protect the rights of prop- 
 erty against the encroachments of the rights of men.
 
 36 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 And, therefore, as money is forced out of politics the 
 rights of property grow narrower and the rights of 
 men grow wider. Now money — which is the syno- 
 nym for aristocracy in America — is essentially thrifty. 
 It will take few chances; and if it does not know posi- 
 tively that the vote it buys is delivered, money will 
 not invest. And on the other side of the bargain, the 
 voter who is not tempted to do the dishonest thing 
 begins to see the honest thing. So righteousness be- 
 gan to get a little elbow room. 
 
 The secret ballot, which came to Americans with- 
 out the influence of any great leader, which was 
 adopted in state after state without a political revo- 
 lution, was the first unmistakable evidence that we 
 see upon the tide, in looking back, to show where the 
 turn in the current actually began. But for several 
 years after the change the current became an under- 
 current. Persons desiring to control politics in their 
 own interests were not estopped, but they changed 
 their methods to suit changed conditions. And it is 
 only fair to say that these persons acted as uncon- 
 sciously as the people. 
 
 There are no heroes and villains in life. There are 
 forces in life; there are forces in politics; there are 
 forces in men; in every individual there is the selfish 
 and the unselfish — the egoistic and the altruistic
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 37 
 
 tendency. And so in our national life the democracy 
 is not one entirely good and true and beautiful set 
 of men, struggling for a common good against the 
 aristocracy, another entirely bad set of men. The 
 struggle between democracy and aristocracy in 
 America is in every man's heart. It is fundamental 
 in our lives. When we find that the millennium 
 did not dawn after crass bribery had been abol- 
 ished by the introduction of the secret ballot, we 
 must not assume that a number of men of wealth 
 conspired deliberately to postpone the sunrise. We 
 all conspired; we were not ready for the sunrise. 
 And so when bribery, which had been crass, began to 
 grow refined, when men were no longer paid to vote 
 either at the polls or in office, we find the selfishness 
 of men manifesting itself through the party system. 
 That selfishness massed is the American tendency to 
 aristocracy. It is the alliance of big business and 
 little business against altruistic growth — against 
 democracy. 
 
 So the American aristocracy moved its forces upon 
 the party system and controlled it, but with automatic 
 precision democracy began to attack the party system. 
 Now, even before the nineties there were the mug- 
 wumps, who advocated independent voting. They 
 also attacked the party system. But their efforts 
 
 
 429735
 
 38 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 were sporadic. Democracy seems to have set about 
 to capture the system, not to destroy it, for democ- 
 racy is organic. 
 
 Ever since the party as a functional part of this 
 government became established in our American 
 system, it has been undemocratic. It is organized 
 from the top downward. In the election of delegates 
 to conventions to name candidates for offices, the 
 hold-over officers of the party — the precinct, the 
 ward, the county, the state, and the national central 
 committees — are powerful agencies in determining 
 the course of the party. Central committeemen 
 under the old party system of nominations can per- 
 petuate themselves, can dictate party nominations, 
 and can formulate party policies. A score of active 
 men organized in a precinct under the old convention 
 system generally controlled the sentiment of a hundred 
 of their unorganized fellows. The few ruled the many. 
 That is aristocracy. We have confused aristocracy 
 in this country with a titled nobility. But wherever 
 the few rule the many, whether wisely or unwisely, 
 whether by virtue of learning or birth or activity, 
 or by the use of money — that is aristocracy. Under 
 the party system through party conventions where 
 great political power was delegated without recall 
 and without much direct responsibility, there grew
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 39 
 
 up an aristocracy of politicians. The caste was per- 
 petuated by the sale of special privileges. 
 
 So we were ruled under the party system by an 
 aristocracy which was financed by greed, and it was 
 the problem of democracy to break down that 
 aristocracy. The power had to be taken from 
 the committeemen and delegates and distributed 
 among the people. That always could be done 
 by breaking the machine of the moment or of any 
 locality and establishing another machine. But 
 that remedy, while it satisfied the moment, was not 
 a permanent cure. The cure lay in changing the 
 system. 
 
 And that democracy is doing in America to-day 
 through the establishment of the direct primary sys- 
 tem of nomination of party candidates for public 
 offices. N ow, the direct primary is no new thing. 
 It is almost as old as the party system. In this 
 country it was known as the Crawford County plan, 
 and it has been in use in many counties over the 
 land for forty years. But it was purely local, subject 
 to little legal restriction and always under the direc- 
 tion and auspices of the district, state, and national 
 machines. So it was not effective. Until the pri- 
 mary became a state institution, regulated by the 
 state, by state laws, a part of the government of the
 
 40 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 state, a state institution in name and in fact, the 
 primary was of little consequence. 
 
 Broadly speaking, there are two types of primary 
 in the United States : the Northern and the Southern 
 type. The Northern type is this: Upon a certain 
 day, at least sixty days before any general election, 
 and at a certain place in each precinct, the sheriff 
 of a county calls a primary election at which all 
 parties are compelled to participate and vote for the 
 nomination of all officers from township trustee to 
 United States senator. The room wherein the elec- 
 tion is held, the voting booths, the election judges, 
 and the printed ballots are paid for out of the county 
 treasury. Candidates for nomination to the various 
 county offices are placed upon the ballot by petition, 
 filed with the county clerk, at or before a stated 
 time, containing the certified list of names of petition- 
 ing partisans of the candidates. Candidates for state 
 offices, including United States senator, are placed 
 upon the ballot upon petition of a certain per cent of 
 the total party vote in the state, or in a certain num- 
 ber of counties of the state, filed in the office of the 
 secretary of state. In most of the states which have 
 a primary of the Northern type, separate ballots are 
 printed, one for each party; and when a legal voter 
 appears at the polling place he is given his choice of
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 41 
 
 ballots, and if there is a doubt about his party fealty, 
 that is to say, if a Republican challenger suspects 
 that the Democrat is voting a Republican ballot, the 
 Democrat is compelled to swear in his vote just as 
 he would at the regular election. 
 
 The votes are counted and sent to the county clerk, 
 who in turn certifies the vote on county candidates 
 to the local authorities, and who in turn certify the 
 vote upon district, state, and senatorial candidates to 
 the secretary of state. A plurality nomination pre- 
 vails in all of the Northern states on all county, dis- 
 trict, and state offices, except in Washington. There 
 a majority is required. 
 
 Certificates of nomination are issued in all of the 
 Northern states by the secretary of state to all state 
 officers and by the county clerk to all county officers. 
 The nomination of United States senator marks the 
 most radical difference in all the various primary laws. 
 Oregon has the most radical departure from the ordi- 
 nary primary law. It puts the name of each success- 
 ful party nominee at the primary for the Senate on 
 the ballet at the general election. And the majority 
 or plurality vote upon the names of these candidates 
 for United States senator at the general election forms 
 what might be called the plebiscite which advises the 
 legislature as to the opinion of the people about the
 
 42 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 two candidates. This in effect gives the people 
 direct vote on United States senator. This Oregon 
 plan is also in use in Nevada, Nebraska, and Idaho. 1 
 
 In one, Dakota, if there is no majority nomination 
 in the senatorial race, or no candidate gets over thirty- 
 five per cent of the party vote, the two highest sena- 
 torial candidates go before the people in a second pri- 
 mary at the general election. In Ohio the vote on 
 United States senator is merely advisory. In Kansas 
 the vote is segregated by senatorial and representa- 
 tive districts so as to preserve the integrity of the leg- 
 islative and senatorial districts. This plan does not 
 provide for the absolute rule of the majority. But 
 there is something to be said for the integrity of the 
 legislative district, and it prevents the larger cities 
 from overcoming country districts. 
 
 In Missouri, for instance, Governor I oik, in his 
 senatorial race in 1908, carried something like eighty- 
 five per cent of the counties, and was beaten by 
 Senator Stone, whose chief vote was in the two cities 
 of Kansas City and St. Louis. 
 
 Missouri has what is called the split primary; that 
 is to say, the primary for the nomination of all state 
 and county officers is held early in August, as it is in 
 most of the states of the Middle West. But the 
 
 1 See Appendix, p. 264.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 43 
 
 senatorial primary is held at the general election. 
 This is unfair, because it deprives the people of know- 
 ing what kind of a man a party will nominate for 
 senator; so that they cannot vote for or against the 
 legislature which will elect the party's candidates. 
 In all of the states the laws governing campaign ex- 
 penses at the election and limiting corporation con- 
 tributions operate at the primary, as also do the 
 bribery and corrupt practices acts of the various 
 states. 
 
 The Northern states having this type of primary, 
 either in their statutes or their fundamental laws, 
 are Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, North 
 Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, 
 Missouri, Iowa, Michigan (with certain optional pro- 
 visions), Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Idaho, New 
 Hampshire, which does not include United States 
 senator, and New Jersey. Minnesota and Pennsyl- 
 vania have primary laws providing for the nomination 
 of county and district officers. The state of Louisiana 
 is the only Southern state which has adopted such a 
 primary. The legality of this Northern type of pri- 
 mary has not been generally questioned in the courts, 
 though in Illinois, for some curious local reason, the 
 state supreme court has declared three primary laws 
 unconstitutional.
 
 44 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 The second type — the Southern type — of pri- 
 mary is entirely optional. It is not paid for by the 
 state, and the option is left to the state and county 
 central committees of the parties. The Southern 
 primary is under the state law in that the bribery 
 and corrupt practices acts and campaign contribution 
 acts govern, but without penalty in some cases, and is 
 entirely conducted by the parties' central committees. 
 In Texas the votes are counted in various conventions, 
 either county, district, or state conventions, before 
 which the candidates would come for nomination. 
 And these conventions ratify the vote of the party, 
 but almost without exception the Southern type of 
 primary is exclusively used by the dominant party. 
 The cost of the primary is so high that the minority 
 party cannot afford to join in it. The result is this, 
 of course, that we have a democratic expression in the 
 Democratic party and an aristocratic expression in the 
 Republican party of the South. Democracy pre- 
 vails in state affairs and aristocracy in federal matters. 
 Therefore in the South, generally speaking, the aris- 
 tocracy is more or less colored, but none the less an 
 aristocracy, and this aristocracy, like all aristocracies, 
 is arrogant and defiant of local sentiment and feeling. 
 But so long as the democracy will not tax itself to 
 compel a democratic expression in the minority party,
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 45 
 
 the aristocracy will continue to dominate Southern 
 federal affairs. 
 
 In most of the Southern states the name of the 
 candidate for United States senator appears on the 
 ballot, and the plurality nominee is indorsed by the 
 legislature. Texas has an admirable plan which 
 should be adopted all over the Union. It is an initia- 
 tive and referendum proposition, which forbids the 
 state convention to indorse any proposed legislation 
 which has not been voted upon at the primary upon 
 popular initiation, and propositions are put on the 
 primary ticket by petition just as candidates are put 
 on. The Southern type of primary prevails in Ar- 
 kansas, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, 
 Florida, Georgia, South Carolina; and with certain 
 modifications, in Virginia and Kentucky. This in- 
 cludes all the states which have a primary vote on all 
 state, county, congressional, and senatorial candidates. 
 There is a hybrid type of primary in Maryland and 
 another in West Virginia which is of little use. 
 
 Every one of these state fights for a state-wide, 
 state-controlled primary law has been almost exactly 
 like each of the others. When the demand for a state- 
 wide primary is incipient in a state, the machine 
 passes a law that means nothing. It bears the pri- 
 mary name, and gives nothing to the people. It
 
 46 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 merely saves the face of the party by "redeeming" 
 a party pledge, thus giving a talking point to cam- 
 paign orators. Sometimes this law satisfies the 
 people for a few years. Then the demand comes up 
 again, stronger than ever, and the machine leaders 
 begin to combat it. They try legislative jockeying 
 with it. They smuggle it into unfriendly committees. 
 They report bills with " jokers" in them. But when 
 a primary law leader is developed in a state, then the 
 fight begins. It is the game to begin compromising 
 with that leader; to offer him a primary upon city 
 and county officers. Next congressmen are put in; 
 then governor; after that state officers, and finally 
 United States senators are offered. But before the 
 machine surrenders United States senator, it is 
 the common machine tactics to go through three 
 stages of compromise: First to offer an advisory 
 vote on senator which shall not be binding unless 
 there is a majority vote. When that is rejected, the 
 machine always offers to split the vote on United 
 States senator, putting it off until the November elec- 
 tion so that the people will not know whether the 
 corporation candidate has won, until it is too late to 
 defeat the legislature of the shameless party that 
 named the corporation candidate; and finally, the 
 machine offers to have the United States senator
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 47 
 
 nominated by legislative and state senatorial district 
 majorities rather than by a state- wide vote. Then 
 the machine surrenders. That is the last ditch. 
 And it will always surrender if the leaders for primary 
 reform refuse to compromise and keep on fighting for 
 the good law without turning into traps and pitfalls. 
 Compromise is the deadly menace of every primary 
 fight. 
 
 The rise of democracy in the Middle and Southern 
 states, across the Mississippi Valley, and along the 
 Pacific coast has been marked by another indication 
 that the people know, either consciously or sub- 
 consciously, where the dams are in the current of 
 progress toward self-government. For not merely 
 in the West and South, but all over the country, the 
 people have passed laws compelling candidates and 
 party committees to file statements of their expendi- 
 tures and their sources of income, and many states 
 have enacted laws limiting the amount of money that 
 candidates or committees may spend in any primary 
 campaign or in a campaign before a general election. 
 These laws are becoming universal. Publicity of 
 expenses is required of candidates and party com- 
 mittees in Alabama, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Ne- 
 braska, Kansas, Montana and Washington; and 
 campaign expenses are limited either as to amount
 
 48 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 or as to the right of corporations to contribute 
 in Arizona, California, Colorado, Missouri, Okla- 
 homa, Nebraska, North Dakota, Minnesota, Indiana, 
 Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachu- 
 setts, New Hampshire, Florida, Texas, Oregon, and 
 Arkansas. 
 
 The movement to divorce the corporation from 
 politics is so general that a federal law has been en- 
 acted limiting campaign contributions. And for the 
 first time in the history of the United States the people 
 know now exactly how much it costs to conduct a 
 national campaign and from what sources the money 
 comes. No more important step toward government 
 by the people, for the people, has been taken in this 
 Republic since its beginning. It is true that in many 
 states the law is a form only; but the fact that it is 
 a law indicates a tendency in American thought which 
 eventually will express itself in custom and usage as 
 it is now expressed in statute. For when the people 
 know where to strike at an evil, they always hit it. 
 And it is safe to say that the decree of divorce between 
 business and politics will be made absolute within a 
 few years. Such flagrant liaisons as that which en- 
 acted the tariff bill of 1909 will serve to make the 
 relations between high politics and high finance so 
 obvious that prohibition will be easy. Democracy
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 49 
 
 proposes to put capital out of politics; so that the 
 rights of men where they conflict with the rights of 
 property may be impartially defined. 
 
 To realize the change that has come over the 
 country in the matter of campaign publicity and 
 campaign contributions, it should be remembered 
 that in 1896 Chairman Hanna, of the Republican 
 National Central Committee, sent money into prac- 
 tically every American state to help his party. Chair- 
 man Jones, of the Democratic committee, had less 
 money than Chairman Hanna, but he sent it out into 
 the country to do what it could. In 1908 the various 
 states sent money to the national committees, and 
 practically no money was sent from the national com- 
 mittees to the state committees, except that which 
 came through the congressional committees of both 
 parties. The need of reform in congressional party 
 committees was made manifest in the tariff debate of 
 1909. But the election of 1908 was an honest elec- 
 tion. To prophesy such an election ten years ago 
 would have marked the prophet for a visionary. 
 And to have told the campaign managers of '84 or '88 
 that within a quarter of a century the whole nation 
 would be voting a secret ballot, for candidates 
 nominated in two-thirds of the American states by a 
 direct vote of the people, without the intervention of
 
 50 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 conventions or caucuses, and that further than that 
 every dollar spent by a candidate or by a party com- 
 mittee would have to be publicly accounted for, 
 both coming and going — such a tale would have set 
 Quay and Whitney and Clarkson and Dudley and the 
 managers of those days to cackling in derision until 
 they were black in the face. It was twenty years 
 ago that Senator Ingalls of Kansas, one of the cleanest 
 men in public life in that day, looking ahead to the 
 limit of his vision, said: "The purification of politics 
 is an iridescent dream." 
 
 But the secret ballot, the direct primary, and the 
 purged party — which are now fairly well assured in 
 American politics — do not set the metes and bounds 
 of progress toward self-government in this country. 
 They are fundamental reforms, it is true, and they are 
 the steps that are necessary before there may be any 
 real forward movement. For it will be seen that each 
 one of these movements is a leveling process, a tend- 
 ency to make money, capital, property, wealth, or 
 financial distinction count for nothing save as an in- 
 direct influence in the ballot box. Each of these 
 innovations, the secret ballot, the primary, and the 
 reformed party, is a step toward democracy — a 
 step toward the Declaration of Independence and 
 away from the Constitution, which so feared majority
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 51 
 
 rule that the majority was hedged about with checks 
 and balances at every possible point. In the early 
 days of the Republic the people annulled the Con- 
 stitution by getting a direct vote on the President, 
 and thus obtained the executive branch of the govern- 
 ment. Now they are capturing the legislative branch 
 through the primary, which to-day puts over half the 
 United States senators under the direct vote of the 
 people. When one stops to think that in Oregon, 
 Washington, Nevada, Idaho, California, North 
 Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Okla- 
 homa, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, 
 Wisconsin, Ohio, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, 
 Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia, New 
 Jersey, and Kentucky, United States senators at 
 the next election will go directly to the people for 
 nominations, and not to the railroads and the public 
 service corporations of their respective states, in short, 
 not to capital as they did ten years ago, one realizes 
 how revolutionary are the changes that are coming 
 into our system. The democracy that was gathering 
 strength in the days of Hanna is beginning to move 
 in the nation. 
 
 Indeed, the growth of fundamental democracy in 
 this country is astonishing. Thirty years ago the 
 secret ballot was regarded as a passing craze by pro-
 
 52 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 fessional politicians. Twenty years ago it was a vital 
 issue in nearly every American state. To-day the 
 secret ballot is universal in American politics. Ten 
 years ago the direct primary was the subject of an 
 academic discussion in the University of Michigan 
 by a young man named La Follette of Wisconsin. 
 Now it is in active operation in over two-thirds of 
 our American states, and over half of the American 
 people use the direct primary as a weapon of self- 
 government. Five years ago the recall was a piece 
 of freak legislation in Oregon. To-day more Ameri- 
 can citizens are living under laws giving them the 
 power of recall than were living under the secret 
 ballot when Garfield came to the White House, and 
 many times more people have the power to recall 
 certain public officers to-day than had the advantages 
 of the direct primary form of party nominations when 
 Theodore Roosevelt came to Washington. The 
 referendum is only five years behind the primary. 
 Prophecy with these facts before one becomes some- 
 thing more than a rash guess. 
 
 The democracy has the executive and the legislative 
 branches of the state and federal government under 
 its direct control; for in the nomination of a majority 
 of the members of the House and of the Senate the 
 personification of property is unimportant. By
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 53 
 
 making the party a legalized state institution, by pay- 
 ing for the party primaries with state taxes, by requir- 
 ing candidates at primaries to file their expense ac- 
 counts and a list of their contributors (as is done in 
 some states), by limiting the amount to be spent (as is 
 done in certain states), and by guaranteeing a secret 
 vote and a fair count, the state has broken the power 
 of money in politics. Capital is not eliminated from 
 politics, but it is hampered and circumscribed, and is 
 not the dominant force that it was ten years ago. 
 Then the political machine was financed by capital 
 invested in public service corporations and was con- 
 tinually trying to avoid the responsibility of its public 
 partnership. Then the political machine quietly sold 
 special privileges to public service corporations. 
 Now the political machine is in a fair way to be re- 
 duced to mere political scrap iron by the rise of the 
 people. To-day in states having the primary under 
 the state control the corporation candidate for any 
 public office is handicapped. The men elected to the 
 United States Senate from states having the Northern 
 type of primary generally have been free men, free 
 from machine and corporation taint. Under the pri- 
 mary system any clean, quick-witted man in these 
 states can defeat the corporation senatorial candidate 
 at the primary if the people desire to defeat him.
 
 54 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 This advance alone is worth the cost of the primary — 
 something like $100,000 for each state biennially. 
 Moreover, the fact that governors and state officers, 
 legislators and county officers, also are free men 
 makes the primary invaluable in terms of money. 
 Taft and Bryan, the two men who had less money 
 behind them than any of their opponents, the two 
 men whom the "interests" did not wish to see nomi- 
 nated, headed the tickets of the two great parties in 
 1908. And when those United States senators who 
 win their nominations and elections without the aid 
 of the railroads and the public service corporations, 
 and win in the face of the opposition of these organ- 
 izations of capital — when these senators begin to 
 name federal judges, the supreme court will begin to 
 reverse itself and the people will capture the lower 
 federal courts — the last citadel of capital. But that 
 is almost an "iridescent dream." 
 
 However, just now the people are finding a way 
 around the legislative veto of the state courts. And 
 this they are doing more generally than may be real- 
 ized by many people. The voters are taking two 
 methods of circumventing the legislative veto of the 
 courts: first, by amending their state constitutions, 
 or making new constitutions ; and, second, by direct 
 legislation, or the modification of it known as the ini-
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 55 
 
 tiative and referendum. State courts are elective, 
 and therefore are afraid of majorities. They cannot 
 declare constitutional amendments unconstitutional, 
 and they handle laws adopted by a direct vote of the 
 people with great care. Hence the prevalence of the 
 constitutional amendment in American states, and 
 the growth of the initiative and referendum from 
 Maine to California^ The tendency to amend a state 
 constitution is not a local phenomenon. In 1908 
 California voted on eighteen amendments, and Mis- 
 souri voted on eight. If a state may be said to 
 have a tendency to amend its constitution when it has 
 voted upon one or more amendments at nearly every 
 biennial election for half a dozen years, then the 
 tendency is fairly marked in California, Alabama, 
 Utah, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, 
 Minnesota, New Jersey, Montana, Florida, Mary- 
 land, and Mississippi, in New York, where the amend- 
 ment is a slow and difficult process, in Vermont, 
 where there is agitation for a constitutional conven- 
 tion, in Michigan, where a new constitution has just 
 been adopted, in Illinois, in Maine, where the initiative 
 and referendum has just been instituted by constitu- 
 tional amendment, and in New Hampshire, Louisiana, 
 Missouri, and Kansas. Where the habit of amending 
 the state constitution becomes settled, as it is in
 
 56 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 California and Missouri, the habit amounts to a public 
 referendum of many laws, and from the standpoint 
 of direct legislation and government by the majority 
 this habit is praiseworthy. If, however, the guarantee 
 of absolutely unrestricted capital is considered more 
 important than the majority rule, the habit of amend- 
 ing the constitution is dangerous and revolutionary. 
 The value of the initiative and referendum depends 
 also upon the point from which it is viewed. In 
 certain quarters politics is considered the science of 
 government of the many by the few. Also a govern- 
 ment is considered excellent when it protects invest- 
 ment, when it makes the right of contract more im- 
 portant than the welfare of citizens, when it protects 
 vested rights even after they become vested wrongs. 
 In those quarters the initiative and referendum, which 
 is coming into American government as surely as 
 the secret ballot came, will be deemed a dangerous 
 menace to our institutions. Certainly it is a depar- 
 ture from the idea of a government by the few which 
 inspired the fathers of the federal Constitution when 
 Chief Justice John Marshall gave the federal judiciary 
 the final veto on all laws passed by state or national 
 legislatures. And the issue should be met candidly. 
 The friends of the movement for direct legislation 
 should admit frankly that the purpose of their cause
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 57 
 
 is two-fold: first, to compel legislatures to act 
 quickly and without evasion; and second, to circum- 
 vent the veto of such courts as are elective, and hence 
 dependent upon popular majorities, and to put 
 whatever righteousness there is in a definitely regis- 
 tered expression of popular will before such courts as 
 are not elective to stay them in their vetoes. For 
 the veto power of the American courts over legislation 
 — under the assumed right to declare legislation " un- 
 constitutional" — is one of the most ruthless checks 
 upon democracy permitted by any civilized people. 
 European kings and courts do not have such reaction- 
 ary power; yet in the end it seems to make for 
 righteousness. Because under that power in America 
 people have developed a patience and a conscience and 
 a patriotic self-abnegation which fits them to progress 
 in the light of the vision within them. So the initia- 
 tive and referendum — a most outlandish phrase — 
 which is coming into state governments and city gov- 
 ernments all over the country will be the instrument 
 of a self-restrained people. It will not be the weapon 
 of a mob. 
 
 The plan of the initiative and referendum briefly 
 is best illustrated by extracts from the constitutional 
 amendment of the state of Oregon. 1 
 
 1 The legislative authority of the state shall be vested in a legis- 
 lative assembly, consisting of a senate and house of representatives,
 
 58 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 Maine and Missouri have adopted the initiative 
 and referendum as a part of their constitutions. 
 South Dakota, Oregon, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana, 
 have the initiative and referendum as a part of either 
 their fundamental law or upon their statutes. Ne- 
 vada has the referendum, and is about to vote on the 
 proposition to establish the initiative and referendum. 
 Illinois and Texas have the advisory initiative; in the 
 case of Illinois it is enacted under a law called the public 
 policy law, and in the case of Texas it is in the pri- 
 
 but the people reserve to themselves power to propose laws and 
 amendments to the constitution and to enact or reject the same at 
 the polls, independent of the legislative assembly, and also reserve 
 power at their own option to approve or reject at the polls any act 
 of the legislative assembly. The first power reserved by the peo- 
 ple is the initiative, and not more than eight per cent of the legal 
 voters shall be required to propose any measure by such petition, 
 and every such petition shall include the full text of the measure 
 so proposed. Initiative petitions shall be filed with the secretary 
 of state not less than four months before the election at which they 
 are to be voted upon (and a majority vote adopts the measure). 
 The second power is the referendum, and it may be ordered (ex- 
 cept as to laws necessary for the immediate preservation of the 
 public peace, health, or safety) either by the petition signed by 
 five per cent of the legal voters, or by the legislative assembly, as 
 other bills are enacted. Referendum petitions shall be filed with 
 the secretary of state not more than ninety days after the final 
 adjournment of the session of the legislative assembly which 
 passed the bill on which the referendum is demanded. The veto 
 power of the governor shall not extend to measures referred to the 
 people.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 59 
 
 mary election law, which forbids party platforms to 
 indorse proposed legislation that is not first voted 
 upon at the primaries and indorsed by the people. 
 Nebraska gives the right of initiative and referendum 
 to her cities. Kansas grants the referendum on all 
 franchises to cities. Arkansas has submitted a con- 
 stitutional amendment enabling the establishment 
 of the initiative and referendum by statute. The 
 movement for constitutional state-wide laws providing 
 for the initiative and referendum is now well under 
 way in thirty states of the Union. The movement 
 never has been defeated by the people of a state 
 when it has been presented to them in a simple form 
 for a direct vote. The legislatures of Wisconsin, of 
 Minnesota, of Iowa, of Oregon, of Mississippi, of 
 South Dakota, of Nebraska, of Delaware, of North 
 Carolina, of California, of Oklahoma, of Wash- 
 ington, of Idaho, of Kansas, of Texas, of Illinois, 
 of North Dakota, of Missouri, of Montana, of Colo- 
 rado, of New York, of Massachusetts, of Tennessee, of 
 Maine, and of Georgia have granted either the ini- 
 tiative and referendum or one of them to certain cities 
 in these twenty-five states. 
 
 Thus we see that while the secret ballot in the nation 
 is universal, and the primary prevails in two thirds 
 of the American states, the movement for direct legis-
 
 60 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 lation has gained foothold in twenty-five states, and 
 is directly before the people, either as a constitutional 
 amendment, a pledge of the dominant party, or as a 
 pledge of the majority of the members elected to the 
 legislature, or in the message of the governor, in five 
 other states — making a total of thirty American 
 commonwealths wherein there is an aggressive move- 
 ment toward direct legislation. It is noteworthy 
 that the movement has followed the direct primary 
 movement and has doubled its strength biennially 
 since 1901. And back of the movement for the initia- 
 tive and referendum and the primary and the secret 
 ballot, waiting silently for its summons to come to 
 the active service of democracy, like Madame Defarge 
 knitting in the wrongs of the people, stands the Recall. 1 * 
 
 So the appearance of the recall, in the cities of a 
 dozen states within a little over a year, should make 
 those statesmen nervous who look forward to the 
 time when the country will go back to the Good Old 
 Days. For this tightening grip of the people upon 
 their state governments, as evidenced in some form 
 in every American state, has been an intelligent, 
 gradual, well-directed growth of popular power. 
 Its direction has been wise; for from the beginning to 
 the present there has been no spasm of public indig- 
 
 1 Appendix, p. 263.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 61 
 
 nation followed by reaction. Whose wisdom directed 
 it? No man's name is connected with it. No party 
 or propaganda has been behind the movement. It 
 operates in Democratic states and in Republican 
 states with equal efficiency. And in no American 
 state has the fight been abandoned, either for the 
 secret ballot, the publicity of party financing, the 
 primary, the initiative and referendum, or the recall, 
 after it has become a serious issue of any group of 
 men of any party. The movement is one of the larg- 
 est vital things in our politics to-day, but politicians 
 generally — even the best of them — do not seem to 
 understand it. It is as unobtrusive as the wonderful 
 miracle of growth. And in all the heavens, the sea, 
 and the earth this movement has no other prototype 
 except the miracle of growth that we pass by un- 
 noticed every day of our lives. It is growth — spirit- 
 ual growth in the hearts of the American people. 
 It is a big moral movement in democracy. 
 
 For each one of these four reforms — the secret 
 ballot, the publicity of party finance, the direct pri- 
 mary, and direct legislation — requires a broader scope 
 for the individual's concern than he would have under 
 the old order. The man who refuses to sell his vote 
 when bribery is a " conventional crime" is considering 
 some interest other than his own. The man who
 
 62 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 votes for a direct primary foregoes a place in the 
 aristocracy of the "organization" forever by abolish- 
 ing that aristocracy. The man who demands pub- 
 licity in campaign finance knows that he is cutting the 
 revenue from under his own party, and that there 
 will be less fun in the campaign. The man who 
 urges direct legislation puts a vast power in the hands 
 of his neighbors to control him. Only as men have 
 faith in the force outside themselves that makes for 
 righteousness will they surrender personal preroga- 
 tives to the public good as the people have been 
 surrendering their individual advantage in this demo- 
 cratic movement. The people are controlling them- 
 selves. Altruism is gaining strength for some future 
 struggle with the atomic force of egoism in society. 
 But who has led the people in this journey toward 
 democracy? Who has directed this movement? Who 
 has performed the miracle of democratic growth in 
 the hearts of the people? Here it is — the great 
 surrender which is bringing the great reward — an 
 old equation in the arithmetic of Providence. But 
 who has put the problem and worked it out? No 
 man — no group of men even — has done it. Yet 
 here it is — no more strange or mysterious than any 
 other of the miracles of growth about us that our eyes 
 see and our souls ignore.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE 63 
 
 The good will of the people — the widening faith of 
 men in one another, in the combined wisdom of the 
 numerical majority — indicates the presence of a hu- 
 man trust that only may come to a people with broad- 
 ening humanity, widening human love for one's fel- 
 lows. And if God is love, as the prophets say, then 
 love is God, and this growing abnegation of self to 
 democracy is a divinely planted instinct — one with 
 the miracles of life about us. If this is true, if the 
 growth of democracy in this country is as natural as 
 the inexplicable wonders of growth in the woods and 
 fields and cities of men, then democracy maybe trusted. 
 For its title is secure, and so we may understand cer- 
 tain signs of the times. For what do we see in this 
 programme of American democracy ? 
 
 It is as old-fashioned as the fog. Indeed what 
 is the fight of our democracy against unfair 
 competition, but the cause against him that 
 "taketh reward against the innocent"? What is 
 the contest of the people against overcapitalization 
 but a struggle with him that "putteth his money 
 out to usury"? What is the campaign of all decent 
 Americans for simple business honesty, but scorn for 
 "the reprobate"? What is this broadening intelli- 
 gence of the Republic, which faced a panic and did 
 not flinch from its conviction of righteousness, but
 
 64 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 "him that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth 
 not"? The tendency to democracy is a tendency 
 to altruism, and altruism is love of kind, and God is 
 love. The social, political, and economic forces re- 
 leased by steam — democracy and capital — are in the 
 crucible of our national life. They are fusing. But 
 there will be no explosion. For when democracy 
 comes to the problems that have baffled other nations, 
 if democracy holds true to faith, true to its instinct, 
 we may expect democracy to be just. 
 
 But those who would use democracy for an end, 
 who would make it serve them by flattering it, by 
 making it mad with power, those who would teach 
 democracy the doctrine of an eye for an eye, and a 
 tooth for a tooth, even against those who have op- 
 pressed the people, they are democracy's foes. For — 
 
 ' i n " 
 
 " Except the Lord shall build the house, they labor in vain that 
 build it ; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 
 
 There is danger always when man makes a thing — 
 whether it be a king, a constitution, a city, a democ- 
 racy, or what not in the way of a human institution — 
 of his mistaking the thing for an end, when it should 
 be merely a means of human usefulness. The real 
 danger from democracy is that we will get drunk on 
 it. Government of the many by the many is not 
 necessarily more desirable than the government of all 
 by one. The tyranny of the mob was known by the 
 French to be as cruel as the tyranny of a king. And 
 there is grave danger that the rise of democracy may 
 not be accompanied by wisdom and self-restraint. 
 There must be a check on the power of the masses; 
 and the veto of the courts on legislation is not only 
 beneficent, but absolutely necessary, if the masses are 
 not checked in their use of power by their own broad 
 charity, their own wide intelligence, and their un- 
 selfish courage to do the right even against their im- 
 mediate material interests. The success or failure 
 of democracy depends entirely upon that working 
 
 » 65
 
 66 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 common sense of impersonal justice in the average 
 man, — that common sense of kindness best termed 
 righteousness. And as the essence of what preachers 
 call sin is mere selfishness, it follows if we are to use our 
 reformed ballots, our cleansed party system, our direct 
 primary nominations, or our direct legislation to 
 any good end in this world, that we must depend 
 upon the breadth of view of the average man for our 
 good end and also upon the amount of righteous, 
 unselfish common sense that men put into our ballot 
 boxes. 
 
 It will be interesting, therefore, in considering this 
 new democracy now growing into power at the begin- 
 ning of this century, to observe what things attract 
 its attention. For as a man thinketh in his heart so 
 is he. And it is fair to take a man off his guard to get 
 at his real convictions. If ever democracy is off its 
 guard, it is during a presidential campaign. So that 
 the platforms, pronouncements, and propaganda of 
 the campaign, represent what America really believes 
 and secretly hopes for. 
 
 Now, the campaign of 1908 was a radical campaign. 
 The differences between the parties were not differ- 
 ences of creed, but differences of degree in the accept- 
 ance of a common creed. Both parties, for instance, 
 declared in favor of an immediate revision of the
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 67 
 
 tariff; both parties declared in favor of controlling 
 combinations of capital called the trusts; both parties 
 declared strongly for public control of the transporta- 
 tion systems of the country; both parties pledged 
 themselves to guarantee certain depositors in banks 
 against loss — the Democrats promising a bank guar- 
 antee law for all banks, the Republicans promising to 
 establish postal savings banks; both party platforms 
 strongly advocated the restriction of capitalization in 
 public utilities corporations; and both party leaders 
 expressed in their official letters of acceptance a belief 
 in the income tax, the inheritance tax, and the enact- 
 ment of a law which would consider the physical 
 valuation of railroads as a part of the cost of service 
 upon which estimated rates should be made by com- 
 missions. Now, all those fish will go on one string: 
 the restriction of capital. Lower tariffs restrict capi- 
 tal by removing the public bonus which enables capital 
 to meet foreign competition; the transportation ques- 
 tion stated in the terms of the Roosevelt policies — over 
 which the only dispute between the two parties was 
 one of priority of discovery — restricts capital by 
 requiring improved service and controlled rates; the 
 bank guarantee law, whether by postal savings banks 
 or by the depositors' guarantee, restricts banking capi- 
 tal in a large area of its operations; the control of
 
 68 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 trusts and monopolies — whether on a basis of the size 
 of the trust or its iniquities — restricts capital in its 
 tendency to form large aggregates, selfish, unrestrained, 
 which by their very size feel that they must move in 
 a domain of their own beyond the plane of common 
 morality. The income and inheritance taxes restrict 
 capital by the oldest form of restriction in the world, 
 simple subtraction. 
 
 Mr. Bryan differed entirely with Mr. Taft as to the 
 methods to be used in restricting the operations of 
 capital, but Mr. Taft was as emphatic as Mr. Bryan 
 in declaring that the restrictions should be made. 
 And it was because the people believed that on the 
 whole they could trust the efficiency of Mr. Taft 
 that they chose him in preference to Mr. Bryan. 
 The victory of Mr. Taft indicated a deep-seated con- 
 viction in the minds of the people that their widen- 
 ing moral sense should change the fundamental legal 
 view of the nation upon the subject of capital. 
 
 The popular belief in the public interest and control 
 of what hitherto has been considered private property 
 is expressed best by an opinion of the United States 
 Supreme Court. The court holds that ' ' when the owner 
 of a property devotes it to a use in which the public 
 has an interest, he in effect grants to the public an 
 interest in such use; and must to the extent of that
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 69 
 
 interest submit to be controlled by the public for the 
 common good, so long as he maintains the use." 1 
 
 So here we have the problem of democracy restated : 
 to fetter greed by the common good. It is the com- 
 monplace conflict between egoism and altruism, be- 
 tween the centripetal and centrifugal forces of nature, 
 of life, of society. To define the limited rights of 
 private property within the metes and bounds of the 
 common good, to express in terms not only of statute, 
 but of law and custom, the creed of a people moved in 
 some small measure away from the selfishness of other 
 generations — that is the mission of our twentieth 
 century democracy. When that task is done, we shall 
 have conquered, spiritualized, and socialized steam. 
 And to set out on that mission we have seen in the 
 foregoing chapter how the people have been fighting 
 themselves free, fighting to get capital out of politics, 
 by taking money out of the ballot box, the conven- 
 tion, and the legislature. 
 
 A government dominated by the aristocracy of poli- 
 ticians would naturally be a government for the friends 
 of the politicians. The politicians were financed 
 by owners of capital or " property affected by its 
 public use, " and naturally this government, in the last 
 quarter of the nineteenth century, expressed the 
 
 1 Munn vs. Illinois.
 
 70 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 protest against recognizing the rights of the partner- 
 ship in property formed by the public use of the prop- 
 erty and limited by the common good. It was a 
 gorgeously simple machine. Capital largely in the 
 form of "property in a public use" furnished money 
 which gave the politicians power. They returned 
 political power to capital, which made it more impor- 
 tant in the government than the people. So for 
 twenty years we find democracy struggling with sub- 
 conscious prescience to throw off her shackles. First 
 came the fight for the secret ballot, which freed 
 democracy from crass bribery; then came the fight 
 for party reform — a fight to make majorities and not 
 capital count in election returns. The fight began in 
 a demand that campaign contributions be publicly 
 accounted for. Then the people prohibited corpora- 
 tion contributions, thereby taking refined bribery 
 from politics. This drove money from the ballot 
 box and made men in majorities masters of elections. 
 Simultaneous with this movement came another for 
 party nominations directly from the people; for it 
 was still necessary to smash to utter debris the party 
 machine financed by the holders of special privileges; 
 i.e. those owning property affected by its public use, 
 who vehemently protested against a public account- 
 ing of the profits of the public partnership and re-
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 71 
 
 garded a legal distribution of the common profits 
 in lower rates and better service as public plunder. 
 And now following the direct primary, which made 
 the people and not the aristocracy of politics the 
 direct masters of the public servants, is coming direct 
 legislation from the people. 
 
 With the breaking of these shackles upon democ- 
 racy — direct bribery, party bribery, machine rule, 
 and unresponsive legislative control of the states — 
 democracy is now setting out on her real mission: to 
 define the rights of the owner and the user of private 
 property according to the dictates of an enlightened 
 public conscience. Now the shackle smashing has 
 been done and is being done by the states. But the 
 broader work done by the people after acquiring 
 freedom in their states has been done, not only in 
 states, but in cities and in the federal government. 
 The work done in the states probably is most funda- 
 mental; it affects more people than the work either 
 in the cities or in the federal government. Property 
 as it comes under state control is largely capital in- 
 vested in stocks and bonds. And the activities of this 
 capital are practically all affected by its public use. 
 So, speaking broadly, all capital invested in any state 
 is rapidly coming under that state's supervision, pro- 
 tection, and control.
 
 72 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 The methods of state control of capital so far as 
 they have been evolved by the uses of necessity, gen- 
 erally are three: first, restriction, as in the case of 
 capital invested in industries, public utilities, and 
 banks; second, division, by means of taxation, as in 
 the case of franchises, licenses, real estate, legacies 
 and (in rare cases) incomes above a certain sum from 
 any source; and third, prohibition, as in the case of 
 capital invested in the sale and manufacture of liquor 
 as a beverage, capital invested in the manufacture of 
 impure food, and capital invested in race track gam- 
 bling or in any business wherein the common good de- 
 mands that the business stop. That the movement 
 is not socialistic is shown by the fact that state owner- 
 ship is rarely, if indeed ever, resorted to in the control 
 of capital. Municipal ownership of commodities 
 and of utilities is common. Federal ownership, as in 
 the case of post offices, is accepted, and it is promised 
 in the case of postal savings banks, and is to be tried 
 in the case of coal and oil and mineral lands reserved 
 from segregation and private ownership; but state 
 ownership is exceptional. The present movement of 
 democracy is toward regulation and control — not 
 toward ownership. This movement is distinctly not 
 socialistic, in America at least. Democracy is trying 
 to give the individual the widest latitude commensu-
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 73 
 
 rate with the common good. And control is only im- 
 posed upon capital when its predatory activities affront 
 the awakening conscience of the people. The whole 
 movement is moral rather than economic. And rig- 
 orous as are the iron laws of trade, the moral law will 
 bend them. For as economic laws bend mere stat- 
 utes, so do spiritual laws change economic reckonings. 
 So far as statutes are concerned, the states of the 
 American Union seem to be unanimous in agreeing 
 that those combinations of capital "in restraint of 
 trade" called trusts shall be controlled, and the states 
 are almost unanimous in the belief as expressed in 
 statutes that the railroads shall be controlled. And 
 while there are more laws concerning trusts, there is 
 more effective enforcement of the laws controlling 
 railroads. For excepting West Virginia, Delaware, 
 Wyoming, Idaho, and Maryland, every American state 
 now has a railroad commission. Typically these 
 railroad commissions are made up of three men, ap- 
 pointed by the governor — though a few states, 
 notably Kansas and Missouri, elect them. The 
 powers of the commission typically are to hear com- 
 plaints of shippers and others, and to "fix and adjust 
 rates " thereafter, and to demand (with varying grades 
 of authority back of its demand) changes in service. 
 Typically the powers of the state railroad commission
 
 74 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 to enforce its demands, are shading from suggestion 
 and advice to considerable legal authority to insist 
 backed up by penalties to be imposed upon disobe- 
 dient railroads. But the real powers of the typical 
 state commission generally are not tested under the 
 state courts, but in the federal courts, where these 
 powers are frequently curtailed. 
 
 Yet in spite of the fact that the railroads, as well as 
 other corporations generally, take serious litigation to 
 the federal courts, the state commissions are doing a 
 real service to the people; secondary service, of course, 
 as compared with the important necessary work of 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission, but still real 
 service. It may be well to consider these state com- 
 missions in some detail. Of recent years there has 
 been a growth in two directions as regards laws con- 
 trolling railroads by the state. One tendency is to 
 give state commissioners the right to adjust rates 
 upon their own motion — without waiting for formal 
 complaints from shippers. This power is given to 
 the commissions of Mississippi, Virginia (where the 
 commission is called the "corporation commission")? 
 Indiana, Nebraska, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Arkan- 
 sas, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, 
 North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Oregon, 
 Washington, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia,
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 75 
 
 New York, Florida, Montana, and Iowa. This right 
 to take up cases without waiting for shippers to com- 
 plain formally enables the commissioners to equalize 
 rates in making changes, so that by creating a new rate 
 for one community or commodity they do not treat 
 another community or shipper unfairly. It is an im- 
 portant power, and one which railroads through their 
 lobbyists in legislatures always resist. 
 
 The second marked tendency in state railroad 
 legislation is to give state railroad commissioners 
 the power to ascertain the actual physical valuation 
 of railroads, and from that actual physical valuation 
 in some measure to determine the cost of service, 
 and to establish reasonable rates based upon the cost 
 of service as well as upon its value. Practically all 
 the state railroad commissions provide that a report 
 of the annual business of each railroad in a state be 
 filed with a commission, and nearly all the states pre- 
 scribe the detailed form in which the report shall be 
 made. Texas requires the railroads in that state to 
 keep books in a certain way, and these books must be 
 open to the railroad commission at all times. Thus 
 with the physical valuation and the gross business of 
 a given company before it, with its labor account, its 
 interest account, its betterment account, and its 
 various fixed charges segregated, a state commission
 
 76 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 can get about as closely to what is indeed and in fact 
 a reasonable rate, within a state, as the rate-making 
 expert, who too frequently bases rates upon the value 
 rather than upon the cost of service. 
 
 The states which have empowered their railroad 
 commissions to ascertain the physical value of rail- 
 roads are Mississippi, Virginia (through a corpora- 
 tions commission, which also looks after assessments), 
 Nebraska, Kentucky, Wisconsin (through its tax 
 commission), Arkansas, Minnesota, Michigan 
 (through its tax-gathering machinery), North Caro- 
 lina, Alabama, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Montana, 
 Kansas, Oklahoma, and Florida. And the states 
 which have made an adequate appropriation for the 
 work of valuation are Virginia, Kentucky, Wisconsin, 
 Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan (which is a model 
 of its kind), North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, 
 Florida, Montana, and Texas. In many of these 
 states the tax commissioners appraise the railroads. 
 And the railroad commissioners use the appraisement, 
 and it forms a basis for getting at the truth about 
 many rate controversies. 
 
 Probably as a result of this information in the 
 hands of the commissions, and because of the knowl- 
 edge that it may be accurately obtained, the move- 
 ment for the two-cent fare has not been checked by
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 77 
 
 the railroads. For now the two-cent fare prevails in 
 Kansas, Nebraska, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Min- 
 nesota, Ohio, Georgia, Connecticut, West Virginia; 
 and reduced fares prevail in Alabama, North Caro- 
 lina, Missouri, North Dakota, Michigan, Pennsyl- 
 vania, Iowa, and Wisconsin. In some of the states, 
 notably New York, the reduction has been voluntary; 
 but it has been voluntary because in adjacent states 
 the fares had been reduced by law. The people 
 have been reasonable in this demand for the two-cent 
 fare. They have rarely asked for it except in prairie 
 states, where railroad grades are easy, and mainte- 
 nance is not excessively high; or if they have asked it 
 in mountainous regions, the regions have been thickly 
 settled and local traffic has been profitable. The two- 
 cent fare legislation has not been either selfish or 
 visionary. And while the railroads are resisting it in 
 the courts, they are resisting the principle of state rate 
 regulation, rather than the amount of the rate. Gen- 
 erally speaking, the lower fares remain while the 
 litigation goes on; though in Arkansas, where the 
 reduction was of doubtful equity, owing to the light 
 travel and the high cost of maintenance, the railroads 
 have reestablished their three-cent fares. 
 
 Contemporary with the two-cent fare movement 
 came the anti-pass movement, and the two move-
 
 78 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 merits were coordinated in this: that the abolition 
 of the pass enabled the railroads to collect additional 
 fares and thus to recover in a small measure their 
 loss, occasioned by the reduced rate. But the anti- 
 pass movement was based, not on economics, but upon 
 politics. The movement was really connected with 
 the growth of fundamental democracy. For the pass 
 of the politician gave him power. He could run on 
 errands against free government, and he became by 
 reason of his pass the political agent, not merely of 
 the railroad, but of all the foes of progress in the com- 
 munity. Railroad passes packed conventions, cor- 
 rupted legislatures, colored the view of administrative 
 officers, and biased courts. The pass was one of the 
 most formidable weapons of the aristocracy of politics 
 against the democracy. But by the quickening con- 
 science of the nation the pass has been either re- 
 stricted or entirely abolished in twenty-five states, 
 save when it is issued to actual employees of railroads. 
 The total abolition of the pass, however, has been ac- 
 complished generally in those states which have the 
 direct primary law. In the other states it is merely 
 restricted. And the measure of control the people 
 have in a given state may be taken by looking at its 
 primary and anti-pass laws. For the abolition of the 
 pass and the convention puts the public service cor-
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 79 
 
 poration politician out of business, and permits the 
 people to conduct their own affairs. 
 
 These four broad expressions of the popular move- 
 ment to control railroads come from so many states 
 that they may be called typical of the minor activi- 
 ties of democracy. Indeed all but the two-cent fare 
 movement are national in their scope, for one of the 
 national parties and both of the candidates for Presi- 
 dent in 1908 of the two great parties indorsed federal 
 legislation which will give the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission power to adjust rates upon its own mo- 
 tion, and which will also give the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission an appropriation adequate to 
 make an appraisement of American railroads and use 
 the appraisement as part of the data necessary for 
 establishing equitable rates. Moreover, President 
 Taft's special message of January 7, 1910, contained 
 the most radical recommendations for the control 
 of capital in interstate commerce ever made in a 
 presidential message in America. These recommen- 
 dations were accepted as matters of course by the 
 people. Ten years ago such radicalism from a Presi- 
 dent would have paralyzed the stock market. So 
 all those attempts of democracy to control capital 
 engaged in interstate commerce by restricting it to 
 reasonable rates, and to prohibit it from political ac~
 
 80 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 tivity, may be called national movements expressed 
 both in the state and federal government. 
 
 But in addition to these national movements there 
 are local movements of importance. For instance, 
 the New England states, wherein hauls are short and 
 rates small if not low, are not so concerned about rates 
 as they are about service. And in the smaller states 
 the commissions in New England are not empowered 
 to adjust rates, but instead to recommend to the 
 legislature for enactment such rates as the commission 
 thinks reasonable. Much space is given in the New 
 England statutes to the regulation of grade crossings; 
 much space is given to the relations between the rail- 
 roads and their employees; much attention is paid 
 to the matter of stations, switches, and terminals. 
 Massachusetts, which is the model for New England, 
 contains a most radical as well as socialistic provision 
 for state ownership in the railroad law. 1 
 
 When we consider that this statute is reenforced 
 by a statute — common to the Eastern states and a 
 number of Western states, and one which is urged upon 
 Congress by President Taft — which limits the stock or 
 bond issues of railroads to such as meet the approval 
 of the commissioners, and when we further consider 
 that the method of sale and all the receipts of the sale 
 
 1 See Appendix, p. 254.
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 81 
 
 of stocks and bonds are controlled by the commission, 
 we see the extent to which the people are going in 
 their restrictions of capital. Also — and this is 
 important — it should be remembered that this 
 Massachusetts law above quoted is not a wildcat 
 statute of a sagebrush state, passed in a corporation- 
 baiting craze; it is a statute upon the books of the 
 most conservative American state, and most of the 
 drastic provisions of other Massachusetts statutes 
 are duplicated, where they are not excelled in severity, 
 by the statutes of the state of New York. But Mas- 
 sachusetts can and does legislate upon the badges, 
 caps, and uniforms of railroad employees, their hours 
 of service every week, their employers' liability, the 
 assumption of risks they take, the condition of 
 their eyes, and the character of their mutual in- 
 surance. 
 
 Legislation for the benefit of employees is growing 
 in popularity. The fellow-servant is not a superior 
 servant in a score of American states now; the hours 
 of service of railroad employees are considered by law 
 in many of the Southern states, in the Dakotas, North 
 Carolina, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin, Massa- 
 chusetts, Montana, and Missouri ; while the trend of 
 federal legislation and of recent federal judicial de- 
 cisions is to protect employees, thus enlarging the
 
 82 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 wage fund. There seems to be a feeling, as strong 
 and sure in New York and New England as in the 
 South and the West and in the far Northwest, — a 
 feeling broad enough to be called a national feeling, — 
 that too large a share of the gross earnings of American 
 railroads goes into interest charges and dividends. 
 Much of these interest charges and dividends are paid 
 upon what looks like " fictitious capitalization" in the 
 light of such information as the people have been able 
 to secure. That phrase "fictitious capitalization" 
 was coined by the Supreme Court of the United States, 
 and, therefore, is not so dangerous as it sounds. And 
 so we find in the statutes of Wisconsin, Texas, Okla- 
 homa, Massachusetts, Kansas, New York, Virginia, 
 Georgia, and Nebraska provision made for regulating 
 or restricting the stock and bond issues of railroads; 
 and President Taft is demanding regulation and 
 restriction of stocks and bond issues not only for 
 railroads, but for all concerns incorporated under 
 federal charter laws. 
 
 Among the other activities of the people in the sev- 
 eral states looking toward the restriction of capital 
 invested in railroads is one found specifically in the 
 statutes of Massachusetts, Michigan, Kentucky, 
 Florida, Ohio, Minnesota, Nevada, Mississippi, 
 Washington, Indiana, Missouri, Virginia, Louisiana,
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 83 
 
 Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Penn- 
 sylvania, New York, Texas, Montana, Georgia, 
 Nebraska, Illinois and Iowa, which prohibits railroads 
 from charging more for a short haul than for a long 
 haul. In all these statutes there are reasonable ex- 
 ceptions to the rule and certain reservations as to its 
 literal enforcement; but the fact that the statutes of 
 other states, by implication if not specifically, make 
 provision for the same rule indicates rather a wide- 
 spread belief in conservative states that there is some 
 justice in a rate per ton per hundred miles — sub- 
 feet, of course, to differences in classification. Michi- 
 gan in enacting her maximum freight law has all but 
 stated the principle, as also have two of the states in 
 in the far South. And when the railroads and the 
 people settle their controversy in the federal courts, if 
 it is settled in favor of the people, — as it must be set- 
 tled inevitably in a democracy, — then it is not un- 
 likely that democracy may solve the railroad problem 
 equitably upon some such basis as the rate per ton per 
 mile. Indeed the Interstate Commerce Commission's 
 reports lean strongly to some such adjustment of rate 
 difficulties. For it is admitted that complaints of 
 discrimination between individual shippers now are 
 being remedied ; and with the complaint as to relative 
 rates for the same commodity between different points
 
 84 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 settled, the only open question will be the one of classi- 
 fication. 
 
 Now, when we turn to the other wide field of demo- 
 cratic activity in which capital is being restricted by 
 the several states, — the field occupied by the control 
 and regulation of combinations in restraint of trade, — 
 we find that the people of the several states acting 
 independently have come to a common agreement. 
 The anti-trust laws of the states are as nearly alike 
 as the railroad laws, and these state anti-trust laws 
 in many cases preceded the national law and inspired 
 it, just as the railroad commission idea was a state 
 idea before it became national. But for nearly 
 a decade after its enactment the anti-trust law re- 
 mained to all practical ends a dormant idea both na- 
 tionally and in the states, and the federal railroad laws 
 remained almost dormant after enactment; but the 
 anti-trust laws and the railroad laws woke up and be- 
 came active together. Then it was found that all the 
 state and federal railroad laws and anti-trust laws 
 required amendment, and that aroused combat from 
 the owners of private property in public use. So 
 that everywhere in the United States at about the 
 same time the struggle to restrict capital in public use, 
 whether that use was in railroads or in industries, 
 became one struggle in two parts; and the story of
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 85 
 
 the struggle to define the boundaries of public use of 
 capital engaged in operating railroads is the more 
 interesting story. 
 
 As we have already observed there are, however, 
 two other methods of controlling the profits of capital 
 in public use — one by division through taxation, 
 and the other through prohibition. And the endeavor 
 of the people to make capital in the public use pay its 
 full share for public protection and for the benefits 
 of civilization makes an interesting record of achieve- 
 ment by the people through their states. 
 
 Thirty years ago we were a nation of tax dodgers. 
 To-day the iniquities of taxation are shameful in 
 American states, but not so shameful as they were in 
 the old days. During the past ten years the tax laws 
 of over half the American states have been changed, 
 in the hope that they would be improved. The full 
 rendition law has come into a large number of the 
 states. And with it state tax commissions have been 
 established in a wide group of the more progress- 
 ive American states. These states are Pennsylvania, 
 New York, Indiana, Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan, 
 Virginia, through her corporation commission; Mary- 
 land and West Virginia through a board of public works ; 
 Alabama, Washington, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North 
 and South Carolina, and Nebraska through a state
 
 86 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 board of equalization. New Jersey has a fairly effec- 
 tive system of county boards working together, and 
 tax commissions have been appointed by the legisla- 
 ture or by the governor to codify and revise and im- 
 prove the tax laws in Maine, Missouri, Vermont, 
 Ohio, and New Hampshire. In nearly every state 
 during the past five years there has been a serious 
 attempt in the legislature redeeming the pledge of a 
 dominant party to do something to improve the tax 
 system. The people have grown intolerant of its in- 
 justices. They are willing wherever a full rendition 
 law is enacted to give in their property at its full value ; 
 and where the taxes increase, there is not as much com- 
 plaint as there would have been twenty years ago. 
 The people earnestly desire to reform themselves. 
 And they are working naturally to whatever end they 
 may attain. For the state tax commission is an evo- 
 lutionary product. Typically it merely binds the 
 local state tax system into a state unit. For half a 
 century the growth of railroads, telegraph, telephone, 
 express, and sleeping-car companies has made it more 
 and more imperative to have something more than 
 the county or township unit to govern taxation, for 
 properties extending over a score of units were subject 
 to a score of different valuations. Corruption fol- 
 lowed naturally in the days when bribery began at the
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 87 
 
 ballot box, and extended to public servants. So in 
 most of the states there grew up a loose-jointed state 
 system; generally it was called the state board of rail- 
 way assessors, and in many states there was also a 
 state board of equalization. But the members of 
 these boards generally were state officers who had 
 other duties and little responsibility for the work of 
 assessment, and it was badly done; favoritism to the 
 public service corporations was inevitable. For the 
 corporations contributed heavily to the campaign funds 
 of the parties, and the party management saw to it 
 that, for every dollar given to the party, the corpora- 
 tions got hundreds of dollars in reduced taxes. 
 
 But this system is disappearing before the stronger 
 system as exemplified in the tax commission. For 
 the tax commission is absolutely responsible for its 
 work; and it is sometimes elective. It has authority 
 to put the valuation of land, of all kinds of personal 
 property, and of railroad property upon exactly the 
 same basis all over the state. Under the tax com- 
 mission the county assessors are organized and di- 
 rected. And the county assessors have direct charge 
 and authority over the township assessors, who in 
 turn have charge of their deputies. Thus the system 
 has an authoritative head. And although only a 
 third of the states have adopted this system, practi-
 
 88 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 cally all of them are working toward it. For the 
 movement is new, but it is growing rapidly. Varia- 
 tions of the system are found in the different states. 
 In South Carolina, for instance, the insurance depart- 
 ment has been taken from the state comptroller, and 
 he has been made in effect a tax commissioner. In 
 West Virginia the board of public works is the tax 
 commission. In Virginia and a few other Southern 
 states the evolution of the tax commission has pro- 
 gressed with the railroad commission, and the body 
 that makes rates for certain public service corporations 
 knows exactly what they are worth. This system is 
 found in a modified form in Oklahoma. In Nebraska 
 real tax reform has been accomplished by the state 
 board of equalization, and the next step will be the 
 commission. 
 
 While the people are working out their tax system, 
 they have decided in nearly two thirds of the states 
 that wealth does not pay its adequate share of the 
 taxes under the present system. So the states have 
 begun to tax inheritances. Some of these inheritance 
 tax laws are a generation old, but most of them are 
 new laws. The inheritance tax now is established in 
 Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Michi- 
 gan, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, 
 Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Connecticut, Wyo-
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 89 
 
 ming, Kentucky, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
 Arkansas, West Virginia, Oregon, Washington, Okla- 
 homa, Utah, North Dakota, Montana, Texas, New 
 Hampshire, New Jersey, Louisiana, Vermont, New 
 York, California, Maine, Kansas, Delaware, South 
 Dakota. Generally these inheritance tax laws are 
 graduated, and do not seriously affect small legacies 
 to direct heirs. But they will fall heavily upon large 
 fortunes going to indirect heirs. These inheritance 
 tax laws represent the instinctive feeling of democracy 
 that all men have a right at the outset of life to an 
 equal opportunity with all other men to develop their 
 essential inequalities. The inheritance tax laws are 
 intended to break any crust of caste that may form 
 in America. 
 
 The franchise tax is also coming into the American 
 system of direct taxation. It is generally a tax on the 
 gross receipts of public utilities corporations, and as 
 the states have provided for a system of bookkeeping 
 for these corporations, the tax is easily assessable and 
 collected. Twenty-five states have a franchise tax. 
 And in addition to this North Carolina, Wisconsin, 
 Virginia, and Oklahoma are taxing personal incomes 
 above a certain sum. 
 
 Now, we shall see in a chapter devoted to the 
 struggle of democracy with capital in the courts,
 
 90 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 how these activities of democracy to restrict capital 
 by state control and to divide capital by taxation, 
 all are going through our courts; gradually statutes 
 are changing into law. But this change is fought 
 inch by inch on the part of capital. And the chief 
 bulwark of defense behind which property rights are 
 hiding is the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States. That was the amendment 
 which guaranteed the negro his freedom. But it con- 
 tains a clause which provides that no state shall de- 
 prive a person of his property "without due process of 
 law." And the puzzle in the courts is to find out when 
 an act of the legislature restricting the activities of 
 capital or taxing capital is really "due process of 
 law." It is a fine game of political hide and seek; 
 but democracy has caught and is catching so many of 
 the hiders, that within a decade at the most the game 
 will be played out. 
 
 The third method which states are using in the 
 control of capital is prohibition. In spite of the 
 Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the 
 United States, persons and corporations having 
 millions of dollars invested in many of the states 
 are being deprived of their property "without due 
 process of law." The closing of the race tracks in 
 Missouri and New York, which has been followed by
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 91 
 
 a slump in race-track gambling all over the country, 
 has deprived thousands of people of property which 
 they considered just as sacred as the railroad holders 
 of coal mines in Pennsylvania considered their prop- 
 erty, and probably with about as much equity. And 
 when one estimates the amount of property destroyed 
 by the growing sentiment against gambling in every 
 American state during the ten years now passing, it 
 is hard to realize that the Fourteenth Amendment 
 should stand idly by and see all this wrong done, 
 while it is so active in behalf of the public service 
 corporations! But the greatest destruction of prop- 
 erty in the country without due process of law has 
 been done to the brewery and saloon business. 
 
 The anti-saloon sentiment of the nation seems to 
 have gone to work about ten years ago, and worked 
 without much result for half a decade. But since 
 1904 results have been coming regularly. State-wide 
 prohibition now prevails in Kansas, Alabama, Ten- 
 nessee, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Maine, 
 North Dakota, Oklahoma. Kansas adopted pro- 
 hibition in 1880, but did not enforce it rigidly in the 
 larger cities until 1907, and Maine has galvanized her 
 old law into new efficiency. Prohibition now has 
 abolished the saloon in a majority of the counties in 
 Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Connecticut, Delaware,
 
 92 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, 
 Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, South 
 Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. 
 And in every one of these states excepting New Hamp- 
 shire and Iowa, where prohibitory laws were repealed 
 in 1903, there is a strong movement for state- wide pro- 
 hibition, indorsed more or less definitely by one of the 
 two ruling parties. In the election of 1908 the Anti- 
 saloon League made gains in New York, Illinois, 
 South Carolina, Washington, Idaho, and Ohio. The 
 movement is strong in southern California, and is 
 moving rapidly up the coast. In Colorado the saloon 
 has been abolished from ninety-three towns within 
 the past two years. In Massachusetts in five years 
 there has been a gain of one hundred and ten towns 
 for the anti-saloon territory. In Michigan there are 
 now eleven prohibition counties and seven hundred 
 prohibition towns, as against two counties and four 
 hundred towns five years ago. In Minnesota five 
 years have seen the prohibition towns grow from four 
 hundred to one thousand six hundred and eleven. In 
 New Jersey, where there has been a warm contest for 
 four years, the temperance people have secured Sun- 
 day closing. And a state-wide campaign for county 
 prohibition is waging in Pennsylvania. 
 The movement against the saloon is gaining head-
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 93 
 
 way in every American state. And sentiment now 
 differs from sentiment thirty years ago; there is 
 little emotionalism in this movement. It is subject 
 to few reactions. The people seem to feel that the 
 saloon is a lawbreaker, that it is a business" extrava- 
 gance, and that it corrupts politics, and keeps the 
 people from accomplishing other ends of good govern- 
 ment. Hence capital invested in the liquor business 
 is not restricted, as capital invested in public service 
 corporations, not divided, as all capital is divided 
 through the tax laws of the state, but destroyed with- 
 out due process of law, and without recourse or dam- 
 ages from the state. And as the railroad laws of the 
 states have been epitomized in the national laws, and 
 as the growing conviction of the states that property 
 should be further taxed has found a national voice in 
 the declarations of President Roosevelt and Mr. Taft 
 and Mr. Bryan for income taxes and inheritance taxes 
 on the federal statutes, so the revolt against the sa- 
 loon has found its echo in the demand for a national 
 law restricting the interstate shipment of liquor into 
 states wherein the sale of liquor as a beverage is 
 prohibited. 
 
 Now, as has been said, all of these activities of de- 
 mocracy through the several states are met with oppo- 
 sition from the federal courts. If, on the one hand, the
 
 94 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 unanimity of the people in the states indicates that 
 they are acting under a common impulse, drawing 
 them to a common goal, on the other hand, the re- 
 markable similarity of opinion against these demo- 
 cratic reforms from certain federal courts, widely sepa- 
 rated geographically and found here and there all 
 over the nation, proves that the aristocracy of capital 
 is as strongly united by instinct as is the democracy. 
 But curiously those courts that are reactionary in 
 their tendencies are blind. Those who serve capital 
 also are blind. They do not see that this gradual 
 restriction of property rights follows the gradual re- 
 striction of the rights of capital in elections, in con- 
 ventions, and in legislatures. In the preceding 
 chapter we saw the growth of democracy. In this 
 chapter we see the restrictions of capital. As the 
 rights of men enlarge, the rights of property in so 
 far as they are antagonistic to human rights are 
 clipped. It would seem that the conflicting rights 
 may produce a serious clash. It is evident that 
 whatever clash there may be must first come in the 
 courts. And as matters now stand the courts may 
 seem organized to protect property. To one who 
 has little faith in American institutions, the situation 
 may seem critical. But those who have faith in our 
 institutions see no real cause for alarm. They do
 
 CERTAIN DEFINITE TENDENCIES 95 
 
 not believe that the liberties of the people will suffer. 
 Property in public use "must to the extent of that 
 interest submit to be controlled by the public for the 
 common good," and taxed "for the common good" 
 and prohibited "for the common good." 
 
 "In the threatened clash between democracy and 
 the courts, there is but one outcome. Of course, for 
 the moment, the courts stand as the national cham- 
 pions of individual and property rights. But it 
 should never be forgotten that in truly democratic 
 countries, the judges are chosen by the people directly, 
 or through the medium of selected executives; so 
 that this condition is not necessarily an enduring one. 
 The popular will, when persistently bent upon a 
 definite goal, is bound to prevail in the end. In the 
 best interests of conservatism, therefore, the safest 
 course for the judiciary will be not flatly to dam the 
 course of public opinion when once clearly defined, 
 lest a flood sweeping all before it result. That hap- 
 pened in the case of our Civil War. The true function 
 of the courts should be to hold back the impending 
 waters until the issue is clear, and thenceforth to so 
 shape or divert the current of affairs that both the 
 individual and the public welfare may interact upon 
 one another, to the good of both." 
 
 Now, these words, however radical they may seem, 
 are not from a rabble rouser. They are from Mr. 
 William Z. Ripley, 1 professor of economics at Harvard 
 University. And the exhortation of these words to 
 
 1 "American Railway Problems," by William Z. Ripley, Ginn& 
 Co., Introduction, p. xxiv.
 
 96 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 patience, under which the nation may grow in grace 
 as it submits for a time to palpable injustice, is not 
 the best authority we have for hope that in the 
 end democracy will triumph. For is it not written, 
 "Blessed be the meek, for they shall inherit the 
 earth"?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 
 
 During the early years of this century two men 
 living in a great city of the Southwest epitomized 
 so exactly much of the good and most of the 
 bad in our municipal life that the story of these 
 men should be set down here. For the story 
 in many ways is the parable of politics in the 
 great cities of the land. One man was rich. He 
 had family. His father was a personage in the 
 state and in the nation forty years ago. The other 
 man came up from the people. He was no one in 
 particular. The rich man kept out of politics; he 
 was in business. He was a pillar of society. The 
 poor man went into politics, perhaps with the idea 
 that some day he might become a pillar of society. 
 He went to the common council in his city for the 
 glory of it. To go he made a journey to the city boss 
 and asked for the right to be a councilman. A city 
 boss always helps men who are in politics for the honor 
 it brings. And after the poor man had been in the 
 council for a time, he found — did this common coun- 
 
 h 97
 
 98 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 cilman — that to get results, to get favors for his 
 ward, he would have to tie up with the "combine." 
 And the boss cinched up the girth of his control on 
 that common councilman two holes when the com- 
 mon councilman joined the gang. Then when the 
 boss fixed it so that a little money might be distributed 
 among the faithful, the common councilman accepted 
 the common practice and took his share. And the 
 other man, the pillar of society, the rich man, knew 
 what had been done by the boss. For part of the 
 money the boss was distributing came from funds 
 which the rich man was guarding. He knew how 
 franchises were bought, for his clients and friends 
 were in the market. But it came to pass, when things 
 reached their worst, that the pillar of society grew 
 disgusted with the miserable business. And when the 
 member of the common council heard a great orator 
 tell of deeds upon the battlefield of Gettysburg, the 
 councilman rose while the band played the Star- 
 Spangled Banner, and said, as his eyes rilled and his 
 voice choked : ' ' Oh, if I could only die for my country ! ' ' 
 And then the crash came. Arrests for bribing and ac- 
 cepting bribes were made. Whereupon the prose- 
 cuting attorney began to get anonymous letters, 
 faultlessly typed, telling him what witnesses to sum- 
 mon, what questions to ask them, and in general how
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 99 
 
 to get at the truth. Every day came these letters, 
 and the thieves in the city, big and little, were in con- 
 sternation at the acumen of the district attorney. 
 The district attorney never fathomed the mystery 
 of his anonymous friend's identity. But he found 
 that the information invariably was accurate. So 
 the district attorney followed the blind lead and got 
 results. He knew that some one was aspiring beyond 
 his courage, that some one saw the sin of bribery, 
 that some man, apparently an educated man, ob- 
 viously a man high in financial and social circles, was 
 holding out a life line to the people. And then one 
 day the man who had wept for a chance to die for 
 his country fled from his country to a foreign land, 
 in fear of a prison ; and the pillar of society died by 
 his own hand, a thief who had stolen |the funds of 
 widows and orphans. The day the rich man died the 
 anonymous letters stopped. That was America in the 
 three decades that followed the Civil War: aspiration, 
 ignorance, and greed; aspiration which never saw that 
 heroism means personal sacrifice; ignorance of the 
 great truth that the sin of one brings suffering to all, 
 and greed — common raw greed for wealth and power 
 and position. And there we were in the seventies, 
 eighties and nineties in our great cities, cheering the 
 flag, robbing our neighbors, and selling our votes to
 
 100 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 mammon in the ballot box, in the common council, 
 and in the directorates of public service corporations. 
 And whatever progress our American cities have made 
 has been made in giving our aspirations a practical 
 turn, through the conquest of the common ignorance 
 and the common greed of the multitude. For the 
 rich were as ignorant of duty to the city as the poor, 
 and the poor were as greedy in their relation to the 
 common city government as the rich. The pillar of 
 society, a rich man, aspired to help the people reform 
 their city; but he was not willing to reform himself. 
 The member of the common council, a poor man, was 
 willing to help the people upon the battlefield, but was 
 unwilling to restrain his own greed; each was dumb 
 when his conscience called upon him to repent of his 
 own shortcomings. Greed killed them both, and 
 so "the dead steered by the dumb went upward 
 with the flood." And a third of a century passed 
 while we sighed at the iniquity of our municipal gov- 
 ernments and went on plundering one another. 
 
 Things began to grow better when in each city a 
 group of men appeared, sufficiently large and suffi- 
 ciently wise, willing to put into the various campaigns 
 something that was evidently not self-seeking; fol- 
 lowing their example the mass of the voters put some- 
 thing besides self-seeking into the ballot box. In just
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 101 
 
 such a per cent as the people put in self-sacrifice 
 have they taken out good government. For the ig- 
 norance and greed which corrupt our cities are complex 
 and diversified. There is the igr.oranec of illiteracy — 
 the smallest of the evils; there' is the ignorance of 
 misunderstanding of the weight and import of issues 
 and the ignorance of the major faults and virtues of 
 men — a secondary evil, easily eradicated; and there 
 is the big primal evil of ignorance as it exists in party 
 bias, class consciousness, and caste feeling. And as for 
 the common greed, it is expressed in the greed of the 
 voter for personal profit or personal power, whether 
 that power or profit be manifest in the nod of the pre- 
 cinct policeman or the franchise for a lighting plant; 
 the common greed is expressed in the greed of the 
 politician, whether it is for jobs for his supporters, or 
 bribes for his vote; and the common greed is ex- 
 pressed by the capitalist, whether in his desire to 
 build a coal cellar under his sidewalk or to steal a sub- 
 way. That is the problem of municipal government 
 in America, whether in New York, San Francisco, 
 New Orleans, Cleveland, Chicago, Galveston, or 
 Portland, whether in the large cities or in the country 
 towns — it is one problem, the task of clearing away 
 ignorance and fettering greed. 
 
 And what has been done with the problem? To
 
 102 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 begin with, of course, there are the public schools. 
 "We spend more money," writes the city clerk of 
 Cleveland, "in educating our children than we spend 
 in ail tfie other departments of the city government 
 combined." And the case of Cleveland, which spends 
 more than half of its municipal income in paying for 
 schools, is duplicated in the cities, big and little, all 
 over America. Schools and playgrounds and parks 
 and libraries, which are found in more or less pro- 
 fusion now wherever ten thousand American people 
 are congregated, must do their work of educating the 
 masses in primary knowledge of the fundamental 
 facts of municipal government before the higher 
 classes in aesthetics may be profitably organized in 
 civic beauty. It is self-evident that if America is to 
 clear away ignorance in the cities, first the people 
 must be taught to read and be given times and places 
 for reflection upon what they read, and they must 
 have reliable facts. 
 
 And reliable facts as to the cost of city government 
 in America are just what the people have not had. 
 Municipal bookkeeping has been miserably done. 
 The blunders and the crimes of politicians have been 
 hidden in ledgers and daybooks. Only an expert 
 could get at the truth about the cost of administration 
 in any one American city, and the truth about the
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 103 
 
 comparative cost of municipal administration has 
 been as little understood as the canals on Mars. But 
 within the five years last past, a widespread feeling 
 has manifested itself in the country that uniformity 
 of municipal accounts was needed. New York, 
 Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago have adopted in part 
 the schedules prepared by the National Municipal 
 League for the keeping of municipal accounts, and the 
 states of Ohio, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Wyoming 
 have passed laws requiring the cities in these states 
 to adopt a uniform system of municipal accounts. 
 The adoption of uniform accounting may not seem 
 heroic. It is not a cause upon which to appeal to the 
 passions of the populace; and yet here is what hap- 
 pened: In July, 1908, the commissioners of accounts 
 handed to the mayor of New York the report of their 
 findings. Before frost one borough president had 
 fled under fire, one had been removed by the governor, 
 a third had resigned, a fourth had been accused of 
 malfeasance in office more serious than is charged 
 against the other four, and one of the five remained. 
 And the office of borough president is one of as great 
 dignity and power as is the office of governor in a con- 
 siderable minority of our American states. A research 
 of municipal accounts similar to that in New York 
 was made in Boston and the revelations shocked the
 
 104 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 city. The accountant of the Good Government League 
 has shown where the city is losing $100,000 a year on 
 coal contracts; where a loan of $300,000 for the ex- 
 tension of water mains was unnecessary ; that a loan 
 bill of $1,584,500 passed by the city council contained 
 items amounting to $536,000 that were not only un- 
 necessary, but were so objectionable that they should 
 be repealed. The report showed that $40,000 a year 
 may be saved in one city department without loss of 
 efficiency, and that contracts have been let and sup- 
 plies purchased, without competitive bidding, at 
 prices ranging from twenty-five per cent to one 
 hundred per cent more than the prices of the market. 
 The Massachusetts Bureau of Municipal Accounts — 
 the first of its kind in the United States — seems to 
 be the forerunner of similar activities in many states, 
 for the state leagues of cities, which are organizing all 
 over the country, are demanding it, and their demands 
 will not long go unheeded. No other single move- 
 ment in American municipal reform promises so much 
 as this movement for uniform accounts. For with its 
 promise it has brought the guarantee of accomplish- 
 ment wherever it has been used. The ignorance of 
 misinformation and misunderstanding, more than il- 
 literacy, binds the ignorance of partisan prejudice 
 and class or caste consciousness upon the people, be-
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 105 
 
 cause ignorance is not the inability to read and write. 
 There is one ignorance of the rich and another of the 
 poor and still another ignorance of the average man. 
 And while schools and playgrounds and swimming 
 pools and libraries and parks and newspapers may do 
 much to relieve the ignorance of the poor, and while 
 perhaps colleges and books and indictments and presi- 
 dents' messages and jury verdicts may do something 
 to cure the profound ignorance of the rich, understand- 
 able municipal accounting must afford the most useful 
 information to the average man who desires to act 
 for the good of all in his relation to his city. And in 
 the struggle of democracy to define its relations with 
 capital and make them equitable, the greatest danger 
 to democracy is ignorance. Democracy is strong 
 enough. It is willing enough. But it must know 
 how to proceed. 
 
 Naturally enough we find the influences which 
 have begun the work of securing uniform municipal 
 accounting in American cities have not stopped there. 
 These same influences have pushed the idea so far 
 that among those interested in municipal govern- 
 ment the idea of uniform accounts is becoming a 
 national idea, and they have also been at work for 
 ten or fifteen years trying to relieve the third and 
 deepest form of ignorance in our cities — that of party
 
 106 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 bias and class consciousness. During the past five 
 years the leaven has been multiplying marvelously. 
 There are three strong organizations devoted to the 
 betterment of municipal affairs. There is the Ameri- 
 can Civic Association, the American Municipal League, 
 and the League of American Municipalities. Supple- 
 mentary to these there are, in half a dozen states, state 
 municipal leagues. Wisconsin has one comprising over 
 seventy of her cities and towns. Iowa has one of the 
 strongest leagues in the country — the first league to 
 ask the state legislature to establish a state system of 
 accounting. Illinois has a league, and the municipal 
 ownership idea, which is just now particularly domi- 
 nant in Indiana, finds its expression in a similar or- 
 ganization. Pennsylvania and Virginia cities are 
 organized by states, and through their leagues know 
 much of the comparative cost of municipal utilities 
 and commodities. So the American cities, though 
 remote and though as different as New Orleans and 
 Boston, know of one another's progress, and through 
 the adoption of uniform systems of accounting, the 
 cities are acquiring valuable information as to com- 
 parative cost of light, water, transportation, power, 
 wharf rates, sewage and garbage disposal, paving, 
 the care of the infirm — physically, mentally, and 
 morally. Thus by reason of the state leagues which
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 107 
 
 are federated into the larger national leagues, there 
 is a growing body of voters in every city that knows 
 the truth about municipal government in so far as the 
 truth may be known through actual practice under 
 modern conditions in this American government. 
 The National Municipal League, which has its head- 
 quarters in Philadelphia, was organized in 1894 with 
 less than a hundred members. It now has over 
 1500 individual members, and 150 affiliated organiza- 
 tions, which have about 150,000 members. As the 
 League has grown in strength it has gathered to it 
 commercial organizations. It now works with the 
 Merchants' Association of San Francisco, with the 
 Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, with the Pitts- 
 burg Chamber of Commerce, and with the Indian- 
 apolis Merchants' Association. A typical case of the 
 trend of the average citizen away from partisan bias 
 and toward municipal reform is found in the Mer- 
 chants' Association of Indianapolis. It was organ- 
 ized, as most such organizations are organized, to go 
 junketing around its commercial territory with a 
 baggage car full of provender, drumming up trade for 
 Indianapolis. Then it took up the matter of organiz- 
 ing a credit system, and established local commercial 
 ratings. Finding business injured by an epidemic 
 of smallpox, it took a hand in the suppression of
 
 108 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 smallpox. That brought it into city affairs. Then 
 it secured the elevation of railroad tracks, and with 
 its own capital built a system of heating and lighting 
 for the business portion of the town. Gradually it 
 edged into municipal affairs, and a few years ago it 
 found that its city and county governments were so 
 incompetently and scandalously managed that the 
 grand jury was called, and the Merchants' Association 
 to-day has a municipal programme. Incidentally the 
 usual list of indictments, fugitives from justice, and 
 resignations from office followed its summer's work. 
 And the chief item on its programme is a new system 
 of city and county accounts — to be uniform all over 
 Indiana. The path to glory leads but to the ledger — 
 when one begins to reform a city, whether in Indiana 
 or Massachusetts or Iowa or California. 
 
 The League of American Municipalities is dis- 
 tinctly a different organization from the American 
 Municipal League. The membership of the League 
 of American Municipalities generally is confined to 
 city officers. Its problems are problems of adminis- 
 tration. It looks around at existing conditions rather 
 than ahead at probable conditions. In the League of 
 Municipalities are a hundred and fifty cities in the 
 United States and Canada, among them being New 
 York, Baltimore, Chicago, Buffalo, New Orleans,
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 109 
 
 Cincinnati, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Its work 
 is intensely practical, and is needed to supplement the 
 Municipal League. The two organizations work to- 
 gether without friction. And they have in common 
 with all municipal organizations, whether national or 
 state, a broad, nonpartisan outlook upon their prob- 
 lems. For the strongest note in all of this movement 
 toward better city government is for independent 
 political action by citizens. The separation of munic- 
 ipal and federal elections or state elections was gen- 
 erally accomplished about the time that the nation 
 acquired the secret ballot. And gradually the party 
 organization in American cities is being overthrown, 
 so far as municipal voting is concerned. If the boss 
 and his financier can afford to operate in both parties 
 in city administration, men who oppose the boss and 
 his master feel that they can afford to follow their 
 example. So we have in Iowa what is known as the 
 Des Moines plan, 1 of city government by commission. 
 In the twenty-seven American states which have 
 authorized the adoption of the commission form of 
 city government sixty cities now have taken steps to 
 operate under this system. The growth of the com- 
 mission form of government has been so rapid that 
 it has befuddled the politicians. And the provisions 
 1 See Appendix, p. 263.
 
 110 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 for government under the Des Moines plan of com- 
 mission government are so radical that the city poli- 
 tician of the old school finds his occupation gone as 
 soon as the new plan is in operation. Briefly its pro- 
 visions are for five commissioners for a city of the first 
 class; each commissioner is elected by a direct vote of 
 the people, and his name is put on the election ballot 
 after a nonpartisan primary, in which ward lines are 
 abolished; each commissioner has full administrative 
 responsibility for some particular branch of the city 
 government, and has absolute power; but each com- 
 missioner is under the recall; that means that if he 
 does not use his great power wisely, the people have 
 the right to take him out of his office during his term; 
 the legislative branch of the city government is con- 
 ferred on the five commissioners, subject to a referen- 
 dum veto by the people, if the action of the commis- 
 sioners is objectionable; and more than this, the people 
 have the right to initiate ordinances for the council 
 to pass, and no franchises may be given without re- 
 ferring the franchise ordinance to the people for rati- 
 fication. If this movement toward fundamental 
 democracy in our cities is not checked within ten 
 years, — if it keeps growing as it has grown during 
 the two years last past, — it will be the form of govern- 
 ment under which a majority of the city dwellers of
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 111 
 
 America will be living. Incidentally in passing one 
 may see hope not merely for the cities in this move- 
 ment. For with a large portion of the American 
 people living in the cities under the referendum and 
 the recall, it is not likely that those outside of cities 
 will rest until they also have these weapons of democ- 
 racy. If the cure for the ills of democracy is more 
 democracy, the American people are in a fair way to 
 a cure within the next ten years. 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to note that Bos- 
 ton, which is abreast with New York in the adopting 
 of a municipal accounting system, is rather ahead of 
 New York in considering the commission plan of gov- 
 ernment. For Boston has officially investigated the 
 Des Moines plan with great care, and most of its es- 
 sential features have been adopted. 
 
 The following cities are now under the commission 
 form of government more or less like the Des Moines 
 plan: 
 
 California: Berkeley, San Diego, Riverside and 
 Los Angeles (considerably modified); Colorado: 
 Colorado Springs and Grand Junction; Iowa: Des 
 Moines, Cedar Rapids, Keokuk, and Burlington; 
 Kansas: Topeka, Parsons, Coffeyville, Leavenworth, 
 Wichita, Independence, Hutchinson, Anthony, Iola, 
 Emporia, Newton, Pittsburg, Abilene, Wellington,
 
 112 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 and Kansas City; Missouri: St. Joseph; Massachu- 
 setts : Haverhill, Gloucester, Chelsea, and Boston; New 
 York: Buffalo and Mount Vernon, where the people 
 have voted to adopt it, but it must be ratified by the 
 legislature; Idaho: Boise and Lewiston; North 
 Dakota: Minot, Bismarck, and Mandan; South Da- 
 kota: Sioux Falls; Oklahoma, Tulsa, Enid, Ardmore; 
 Tennessee: Etewah, Memphis, Bristol, Clarksville, 
 Richard City; Texas: Galveston, Houston, Palestine, 
 Waco, Ft. Worth, Austin, El Paso, Dallas, Dennison, 
 San Antonio, Greenville, Sherman, Beaumont; North 
 Carolina: Charlotte; Washington: Tacoma. 
 
 The referendum, however, is not peculiar to the 
 Des Moines plan. More than half the better class 
 of American cities now have it in some form or other. 
 Most franchises and bond issues in American cities 
 are now submitted to the people before the franchises 
 and bond issues become legal. The old days when the 
 boss could sell a franchise are passing. And where 
 the people vote upon such matters they are not guided 
 by parties. They are not blinded by ignorance. For 
 the responsibility of power comes to them — even in 
 the wards where illiteracy is the highest, — and the 
 people act with good sense and a feeling of equity 
 which is the endowment of the Teutonic man wherever 
 he is found.
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 113 
 
 The effect of this growth of democratic participa- 
 tion in city affairs has been felt by capital. It is 
 said by those who have their eyes upon the country's 
 bond market that as it stands to-day, no franchise can 
 be framed that the people will vote for which bond 
 buyers will take. This of course is merely a saying. 
 But it has an element of truth in it. A short-term 
 franchise, with strict provisions for regulation of 
 rates, and unequivocal provisions for first-class serv- 
 ice, translated into commercial terms, means that 
 the bond issue will be only large enough to cover the 
 physical value of the property in question, as the 
 people having the power of rate regulation will de- 
 mand rates based pretty nearly upon the actual 
 value of the property. So the promoter's profit in 
 franchise transactions is passing with the boss's 
 power to sell franchises. The referendum is the eco- 
 nomic as well as the social manifestation of the rise 
 of the common people. But it does not spell social- 
 ism, nor the abolition of capital. If the bond trader 
 cannot make the promoter's profit on bond sales, under 
 the referendum, always capital honestly seeking invest- 
 ment can find it in buying municipal bonds issued 
 to pay for the municipal ownership of the utilities 
 which the people will construct or buy for themselves, 
 even if the promoter fails to float his proposition.
 
 114 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 In the American states we find the power of democ- 
 racy growing, and as money goes out of politics, 
 profits of promoters decrease; but investments at 
 low rates of interest become more secure. In the 
 cities as the people take a larger part in city affairs, 
 as corruption in politics ceases, the boss and the pro- 
 moter go out of use hand in hand. As the people 
 rise, the plunderers fall. Honest investments are not 
 curtailed by the rise of the average man in American 
 life; but fabulous speculative profits in public utilities 
 are becoming things of the past. 
 
 Now all this struggle with ignorance in its first 
 phase through the school and playgrounds and 
 libraries to reduce illiteracy; in its second phase 
 through municipal administration to get the truth 
 before the common people, and in its third phase 
 widening the responsibility of the citizen to remove 
 partisan bias and class consciousness has cost some 
 one something. Some one has been taking time 
 from his business, money from his purse, and privi- 
 leges from his ancient rights. Everywhere there has 
 been surrender — sacrifice. And in so much as we 
 have subdued ignorance we have been circumscrib- 
 ing greed in the government of our cities. The 
 affairs of the folkmoot of old were simple affairs 
 that any adult might understand. But the folk-
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 115 
 
 moot of our great cities is complex. Justice is not 
 obvious to the illiterate, the misinformed, or the 
 prejudiced, and yet until the folkmoot is able to 
 establish justice — to deal fairly with the man who 
 wrongs the city — the equilibrium will not be found, 
 and our modern problems of city administration will 
 not be settled. For there is never a balance until it 
 is the right balance; wrong, whether it is against the 
 poor man or against the rich man, will keep jogging 
 the scales. And so long as it is evident that Ameri- 
 cans in their cities have put considerable self-sacrifice 
 in the balance it is fair to ask what has been gained? 
 What really has been accomplished ? Wherein is the 
 citizen better off than if he was ignorant, deluded, and 
 prejudiced? Wherein has greed been checked? 
 The census bulletins indicate that 148 American 
 cities of over 30,000, having a population of 
 nearly 23,000,000, had in 1908 a per capita debt 
 of $60.54, being an increase of debt of twenty- 
 three per cent in five years, while the municipal 
 expenditures in those cities increased in five years 
 from $13.36 to $14.90. The debt is increasing, 
 and the outgo for expenses is but slightly less than 
 the income for receipts. If Mr. Gradgrind desires 
 the facts, they are disconcerting. They indicate 
 that as municipal administrators we are tetering on
 
 116 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 the edge of Jfailure with all our fine talk. Yet the 
 facts are not the truth. For nearly twenty-seven 
 per cent of the increase in the per capita expenses in 
 those years has been for schools, and the increase of 
 debt has been mainly the purchase price of public 
 utilities. For instance: the census bulletin shows 
 that less than one third of the electric light and power 
 plants in the United States were municipally owned 
 in 1902. That number has now increased to over 
 two fifths, and in the municipal ownership of water- 
 works plants the increase is much larger. The 
 extent to which municipal ownership of public utili- 
 ties has gone in recent years is shown by the "Hand- 
 book of American Municipalities," a most accurate 
 compilation of municipal statistics issued by the 
 League of American Municipalities. This handbook 
 prints the statistics of two hundred and eight cities — 
 large and small, and all but sixty-five of them are 
 owners of some public utility, and when one elimi- 
 nates the smaller cities from the reckoning, one finds 
 that in cities of over 40,000 only seventeen out of a 
 hundred are under the old order. And the growing 
 debt of our cities, which now exceeds in per capita 
 the national debt, is an evidence of municipal pros- 
 perity, not of adversity. For the revenues from 
 these municipal industries are in excess of the expend-
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 117 
 
 itures. They are helping to pay for the schools, 
 the parks, the libraries, the playgrounds. Thus the 
 sacrifice of those citizens who have worked to check 
 the ignorance of the people of all grades of society in 
 the city — the work of the underpaid school-teacher, 
 and the honest school board member, the work of the 
 politician who sold his soul for a park in his ward, the 
 work of the reformers who demanded to see the books 
 of the city, the work of the city politician who fought 
 for separate elections for his city and for a non- 
 partisan judgment from the people in city affairs, 
 the work of the committees that toiled nights and 
 days for nothing to get at the facts when the water- 
 works, or the electric light, or the docks and wharves 
 were purchased — the work of these people has been 
 justified, and the sacrifice of the few has been trans- 
 formed into the blessing of the many. 
 
 And yet only as the many have been able to return 
 to the city what it has given have they been really 
 made the beneficiaries of the vicarious sacrifice. That 
 is the real test of our cities. It is not important to 
 know what our schools cost, but what they yield. 
 It is not of significance to see the books, if we do not 
 improve the conditions they show. It is nothing in 
 the long run to break party caste, if we do not build 
 something better. It is of no avail to put boodlers
 
 118 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 in jail and elect others to fill their places. For bood- 
 ling is the flower and not the root of evil. And the 
 evil is ignorance manifested in selfishness among the 
 voters, and if our citizens have not learned the com- 
 mon sense of kindness, they have learned nothing. 
 
 During the past seven years the American people 
 in cities have been investing something like $5,000,000 
 a year in public utilities. Some utilities they have 
 bought. Some they have built. But in either 
 case they have taken business that was private and 
 made it public. The movement toward municipal 
 ownership is strong, definite, unwavering. It has 
 been growing steadily since the first year of the new 
 century. But it is only important in view of what- 
 ever honesty and integrity it has shown in the public 
 judgment. Therefore we may ask: How has the 
 transfer of business been conducted ? Has any one 
 been wronged ? Have injustices to the former owners 
 been done ? Is it not a most remarkable testimony 
 to the sense of justice and innate decency of the people 
 of American cities that, in all this municipal trading, 
 no one has been reported as having been seriously 
 injured? The democracy must have been fair to 
 capital, or there would be now an accusing party to 
 bear witness to the democratic ruthlessness and 
 greed. But the people seem to have replaced private
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 119 
 
 greed of capital by public kindness — overcoming 
 evil with good, the only possible way to ultimate 
 victory. The people living in American cities have 
 a billion and a third of debts. These debts represent 
 largely their industrial activities. They represent 
 subways constructed, lighting plants bought, docks 
 and wharves acquired, parks laid out upon confiscated 
 ground, schools established, market places located, 
 hospitals built, equipped, and operated, playgrounds 
 and farms for boys and girls maintained, sewers and 
 garbage desiccating plants constructed, waterworks 
 and heat and power plants taken over or erected. 
 Surely if the democracy was unfair, some one would 
 organize the complaint against its business methods. 
 The people have been extravagant; they have been 
 even prodigal and foolish in some of their industrial 
 ventures. But they have not been unjust. The 
 final social judgments of democracy in our American 
 cities have justified in the public kindness all of un- 
 selfish effort that has been devoted to them. And, 
 moreover, with the manifestation of the fairness of 
 the people, a respect for them has grown up among 
 politicians. There must always be a ruling class in 
 America — the class that makes politics its business. 
 And that class will not be reformed by putting its 
 members in jail — not particularly. It is being re-
 
 120 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 formed, however, in our American cities by the grow- 
 ing moral intelligence of the average men. Our 
 government is representative. Our ruling classes 
 must be of our own kind. And as the Municipal 
 Researchers rise Tammany will fall, not because the 
 Researchers happen to be better men than Tammany 
 men, but because the average man is of a higher type 
 than the Tammany average. Hence in a score of 
 our American cities the power of the local boss is 
 sinking as the intelligence and honesty of the people 
 is rising. The whole tendency of municipal politics 
 is away from the irresponsible boss to the responsible 
 ruler, from the aristocracy of the machine to repre- 
 sentative government, because the responsible ruler 
 represents the public's moral average better than 
 the irresponsible boss. The boss is no worse than he 
 has been for a generation. It is the people that have 
 changed. The meaning of the Des Moines plan of 
 municipal government and the real significance of 
 the movement for uniform municipal accounting is 
 to simplify responsibility in municipal affairs, and 
 fix it definitely where it belongs. It is not a move- 
 ment for cheap government, for lower taxes, for 
 better service, so much as it is a tendency that must 
 follow the enlightenment of the people — a tendency 
 toward real self-government. It is the intelligent
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 121 
 
 rise of the individual, and so far from being social- 
 istic — in the sense that socialism is commonly sup- 
 posed to be the submersion of the man in the mass — 
 the modern movement in American politics is bristling 
 with rampant, militant, unhampered men crowding 
 out of the mass for individual elbowroom. 
 
 The problems before American cities now are 
 fundamentally problems arising from aspirations of 
 democracy, struggling with ignorance and greed. 
 These problems manifest themselves in many forms. 
 The gravest problems are those that come from the 
 regulation and control of public utilities. For the 
 boss gets his money from the man who is after a fran- 
 chise, or who has a franchise to protect. The evils 
 of ballot-box stuffing, of lawbreaking, of vice, of 
 petty grafting, follow in the train of the boss and the 
 men whom he elevates with his tribute levied upon 
 the public service corporation. Banish the boss, and 
 the protector of gambling and organized vice is gone. 
 It is easy enough to say that when the source of the 
 boss's supply is cut off that he will disappear. But 
 that means the municipalization of all public utili- 
 ties — light, water, heat, power, transportation, and 
 communication. The people have demonstrated that 
 they are competent to operate their water supply. 
 They are taking hold of light, heat, and power with
 
 122 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 much sense and ability. They can sprinkle and clean 
 their own streets, just as they drain them and remove 
 sewage and garbage. These matters are compara- 
 tively simple. Cincinnati owns a railroad. Chicago 
 is in partnership with the transportation companies. 
 San Francisco owns a street-car line. New York 
 owns her subways. Most cities own their docks and 
 wharves. But municipal ownership of street rail- 
 ways and telephones — there is the flag of truce. 
 It is not peace, probably, but a protocol. In the 
 meantime franchises are expiring, and the grand jury 
 is kept busy! It is likely that the people are not pre- 
 pared for municipal ownership of street railways and 
 telephones. They have come long distances in ten 
 years. They have a firmer grip on their local govern- 
 ments than ever before. But the schoolhouses and 
 playgrounds and parks and libraries are filled, and 
 there are crowds before the bulletin boards of the bu- 
 reau of Municipal Research; also party control is dis- 
 tinctly loosening ; and inevitably the protocol with the 
 transportation companies must end, and telephones 
 as private enterprises may count their days after the 
 street railways follow the waterworks and the lighting 
 plants. For as the Supreme Court ' has indicated, 
 capital in so far as it is invested in concerns having a 
 
 1 Munn vs. Illinois.
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 123 
 
 public use is in that public use public capital, and 
 must be subject to control for the common good. 
 And in a city the common good requires the estab- 
 lishment of rates that will not yield large profits to 
 capital invested in public service corporations. For 
 the common good such capital must be transferred 
 from those funds paying profits in dividends on stock 
 to those funds that merely may pay interest on 
 bonds; so public service corporations must submit 
 to public ownership. Certainly it is a new tenet for 
 America, but it seems to be inevitable, considering 
 the direction that American democracy is taking, that 
 as the people grow able to govern themselves, they 
 are able to finance themselves, and thereby to over- 
 come the evils of business impeding their progress by 
 operating the irritating business impediment them- 
 selves. Moreover the tribute public service corpora- 
 tions pay to local bosses to protect special privileges 
 brings bad government to the city : the more tribute, 
 the worse city government. So the more the lawyers 
 of the franchise owners pay to bosses to help in poli- 
 tics, the sooner will the holders of stock in private 
 corporations find themselves holding municipal bonds 
 in lieu thereof. The harder the pressure is from 
 above, the stronger the rebound will be from below. 
 This rebound is not local and sporadic. It is not
 
 124 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 socialistic. For William M. Ivins, Republican can- 
 didate for mayor of New York in 1907, when attorney 
 for the Public Utilities Commission of New York City, 
 by appointment from Governor Hughes, after two 
 years of hard technical investigation of the new sub- 
 ject, declared that the private operation of public 
 utilities under franchises is a failure. He is for public 
 ownership. Charles Francis Adams, at the head of 
 a commission appointed in Massachusetts, after 
 investigating public utilities all over America, reports 
 the same conclusion. New Orleans and San Francisco 
 are installing municipal waterworks. Los Angeles, 
 under her new charter, providing for the initiative 
 and referendum and the recall, is not only installing 
 municipal waterworks, but electricity, and water 
 for irrigation, and power for commercial purposes. 
 Under her new charter Los Angeles is empowered to 
 buy all of her public utilities, and Chicago has just 
 granted a telephone ordinance with a right to pur- 
 chase reserved in it. In Minneapolis the public 
 ownership fight is the leading issue, just as it is in 
 Detroit. In Galveston, where the taxes have been 
 increased to nearly sixty mills, the leading citizens, 
 having secured such good returns from their tax in- 
 vestment under a commission system of government, 
 have signed a great petition asking the commis-
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 125 
 
 sioners not to retrench, but to keep on in the good 
 work. The power of the public service corporation 
 through the city boss is on the wane. Moreover, 
 those who are on the wrong side know that it is noth- 
 ing but a masterly retreat. Said W. Carl Ely, presi- 
 dent of the American Street and Interurban Railway 
 Association, speaking of the movement to control 
 public service corporations: "This movement is not 
 confined to any state. It is sweeping over the whole 
 world. The people are asserting themselves. We 
 might as well seek to dam Niagara as to stop it. 
 Deep down in our hearts we know it is right. Let 
 us be men enough to recognize it; let us cooperate 
 with the people and let them understand we are 
 working together; be frank with them, and we shall 
 find that they only want fair and square treatment. 
 We have had trouble because there was captious 
 fighting against proper measures. Let us deal with 
 the people in the most open way possible and 'fare 
 trouble,' and all other troubles, will disappear." And 
 more remarkable than the words themselves is the 
 fact that these words were received by the association 
 with "great applause and general approval." 
 
 Less in importance after local self-government 
 free from corporation domination, is the demand for 
 home rule for cities, free from state domination.
 
 126 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 For the one complaint universal to all American cities 
 is against the interference of the state in local matters 
 — chiefly local matters of finance. Write to any 
 American mayor, and he will tell you that if he could 
 rub Aladdin's lamp, he would ask for home rule. And 
 he desires home rule chiefly so that the city can in- 
 crease its debt. The people in our large cities are 
 restive. They wish to do more than they are doing. 
 The feeling is universal. A letter from the bureau 
 of information of the American League of Municipali- 
 ties says: — 
 
 "I have before me notes concerning three great 
 cities, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, each of 
 which is preparing to make demands on their respec- 
 tive state legislatures for relief. They argue for 
 larger debt limit. 
 
 "Chicago asks for legislation that will permit an 
 increase in its bonded indebtedness of about 
 $16,000,000. Philadelphia cries that it is unfairly 
 handicapped by the present limitation of the munici- 
 pality's bonded indebtedness to seven per cent of 
 the realty assessments. Cincinnati has organized 
 a committee to ask the legislature for an amendment 
 to the so-called Longworth act. This committee 
 will ask that the city may at any time issue bonds 
 without limit for street and sewer improvements, the 
 erection of viaducts and the construction of subways, 
 the laying out of parks and boulevards, the estab- 
 lishment of public bath houses and municipal lodging 
 houses, and the building of a new hospital and a new 
 house of refuge."
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 127 
 
 In considering this problem of public service, it is 
 important to bear well in mind this fact: that these 
 public service corporations that are bones of conten- 
 tion in our cities first of all serve our homes. Light, 
 water, heat, and transportation are home comforts. 
 Moreover, they are no longer luxuries for the rich; 
 they are more diffused among us than are the com- 
 forts of the well-to-do. Light, heat, water, and 
 transportation are the necessities of all the people, 
 as society is organized to-day. Combined, these 
 utilities are the footing stones of the foundation of 
 the creature needs of a civilized home in every 
 American city — large or small. They are labor 
 savers, and hence industrial emancipators of women. 
 A penny increase in the price of any of these utilities, 
 or any variance from good service, is a serious matter 
 in the household economy of the people. And we 
 Americans are home dwellers before we are anything 
 else. It is absurd to say that elements so intimate 
 and vital in the happiness and efficiency of the home 
 — our most important institution — shall not be en- 
 tirely under our own direction and control, even 
 if that direction and control involve ownership. 
 
 As the forces of education turn out from the schools 
 and their auxiliaries citizens who think, the field of 
 municipal activities wherein these people live must
 
 128 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 broaden. They cannot remain stationary. We are 
 in the youth of our race life. Yet we hold to the 
 racial institutions that made us conquerors of the 
 Mongol and the Semite: the home and the folk- 
 moot. And the strong definite movement all over 
 America for direct nominations by the people, for 
 the referendum in the cities, for nonpartisan city 
 government, all these are the return to the rule of the 
 people. What is this universal movement in our 
 American cities for home rule but the old race call 
 for the rule of the folk? It is set as firmly in our 
 bones as the lust of land. And we are as ready as 
 ever to fight for the rule of the people, whether the 
 contest be set at arms, in politics, or in business. 
 Whenever it has been a question of self-government 
 and municipal ownership on the one hand, or boss 
 rule and private ownership of the municipal indus- 
 tries on the other hand, New York and Chicago 
 have voted for municipal ownership. Our bourbon 
 statesmen may talk themselves black in the face 
 telling us that municipal ownership requires the 
 abandonment of the traditions of the fathers; but 
 when private ownership means injustice or the 
 domination of bosses, something deeper than consti- 
 tutions and traditions stirs in the blood. For we 
 are a freeborn people. Moreover, we are a young
 
 PROGRESS IN AMERICAN CITIES 129 
 
 race. We still see visions. And the genius of a 
 people that can conceive and accomplish self-govern- 
 ment under a king and a monarch or a republic, will 
 keep self-government pure and undenled, under what- 
 ever scheme it works out for the control or ownership 
 of its public utilities. So long as the utilities serve 
 a home that is sound and wholesome and clean, that 
 home will breed men and women with the clear strain 
 of the blood that is not dismayed or vanquished by 
 any broadening scheme of local self-government. 
 What we have gained in three thousand years of 
 pilgrimage westward across the earth we have kept, 
 and we are stronger than ever before in our struggle 
 for the retention of the home and the home rule. And 
 the city, which seems to be in a fair way of becoming 
 the prevailing type of local government on this conti- 
 nent, will be a free city. 
 
 A curious miracle — but how old — is this city 
 life of ours. Here in these American cities the race 
 migrations of Europe are epitomized. The hand 
 of fate seems spinning the ancient web, with the 
 primeval woof. From the skein in the upland plains 
 behind the Himalayas the moving hand scattered the 
 threads through Europe from Asia Minor to Gibraltar 
 and northward to the Baltic and the Arctic Sea. Now 
 the hand is gathering up the threads through our
 
 130 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 American cities, weaving the pied ravelings into the 
 cloth for whatever wedding garments fate may be 
 making for us in the fullness of time. And yet, 
 when the Celt and the German came and pushed the 
 American out of the slums and up and on, we feared 
 for the nation; and when the Italians crowded in and 
 pushed the Irish and the Germans up and on, again 
 we were afraid; and when the Norsemen came charg- 
 ing through our cities to their homes on the prairies, 
 and pushed onward, again we feared for our institu- 
 tions. And now that the Greeks and the Slavs and 
 the Armenians and the Huns and Poles are pushing 
 the Latin races up from the slums and deeper into 
 our civilization, we need not tremble for our institu- 
 tions. For these strangers are all of the old blood. 
 They will merge into the old blood again. The Amer- 
 ican is no sport, no chance child, no woods colt in the 
 races of men. He is the flower of the purest blood on 
 earth, the youngest blood on earth. And the unseen 
 hand of fate that is weaving the garment will weave 
 ignorance and greed out of its warp, and make it 
 strong and fine and clean. And so these cities of ours 
 — spindles in the hands of fate — dirty though they 
 are, and befouled, must keep moving incessantly as 
 they weave the garment.
 
 GHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 
 
 Theoretically this nation lives under a govern- 
 ment of laws sustained by a written Constitution. 
 Practically it is a government by public sentiment. 
 This does not mean that it is a government by public 
 clamor. But it does mean that whenever the people 
 have believed in a public policy, whether it was the 
 direct election of the President by the people, or 
 the emancipation of slaves, or the issue of greenbacks, 
 or the acquisition of colonies, or the direct election 
 of United States senators, and have believed in these 
 things deeply enough to sacrifice their own personal 
 comfort for them, — to fight for them in short, — the 
 Constitution has never been strong enough to hold 
 them back. The Constitution was meant to suppress 
 clamor, not sentiment; the difference between the 
 two expressions, being — broadly — that clamor is 
 the desire to reform some one else, and public senti- 
 ment is the desire to reform one's self. Public clamor 
 is essentially selfish — tyrannical. Real public sen- 
 timent is essentially unselfish — democratic. For 
 
 131
 
 132 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 democracy is, at base, altruism expressed in terms of 
 self-government. And so to know what kind of a 
 national government we really have in America, it 
 is as necessary to study our public sentiment as it is 
 to examine our laws and consider our written Consti- 
 tution. 
 
 For while a city or a state may exhibit some 
 sporadic legalization of clamor, the area of the nation 
 is too large, geographically, mentally, and morally, 
 for sheer clamor often to get legal recognition. A 
 democracy must be big. Size is a fundamental part 
 of it; and our very bigness here in America has pre- 
 vented many vital mistakes. Clamor, from Cali- 
 fornia to Maine, and from Florida to Oregon, however 
 loud and terrifying, generally wears itself out before 
 the machinery of law can stamp it and authorize it. 
 So, as a rule, our federal laws are observed; not be- 
 cause the national government is so ruthless, but 
 because its laws are just. 
 
 And in taking inventory of our national progress 
 during the decade or two last past, we must consider, 
 along with our new laws, the public sentiment that 
 made them, and that sustains them, and is demand- 
 ing the extension of these laws into larger areas. 
 For the sentiment that made the laws is more impor- 
 tant than the laws themselves. And the study of
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 133 
 
 the organization and growth of sentiment is an im- 
 portant part of the work of the student of govern- 
 ment. For much error prevails about the way this 
 nation thinks. Commonly, newspapers are sup- 
 posed to be the great factories of sentiment. Gentle- 
 men in the pillory of public sentiment blame their 
 discomfiture upon the newspapers and magazines. 
 And, if these gentlemen are in funds at the moment, 
 they buy other newspapers, and subsidize other maga- 
 zines, and — accomplish nothing. For newspapers 
 and books and magazines do not make sentiment. 
 They merely voice sentiment. Often they make 
 clamor, but public sentiment grows. It is as evanes- 
 cent as the wind, and as resistless as the waves. It 
 may be dammed, but not permanently checked. 
 And in America, public sentiment grows after the 
 manner of the genius of the people: by parliamen- 
 tary organization. Given an idea in common to 
 three Americans, and the best known becomes presi- 
 dent, the most effective secretary, and the richest of 
 the three treasurer. These are our faith, hope, and 
 charity. 
 
 "To believe your own thought, to believe that what 
 is true for you in your private heart is true for all 
 men — that is genius," says Emerson, and admon- 
 ishes us, "Speak your latent conviction, and it shall
 
 134 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time 
 becomes the outmost." So public sentiment grows 
 in America. An idea comes to a man and simul- 
 taneously to his brother a thousand miles away, or 
 perhaps in the next block. The idea draws them 
 together. When they meet, there is a third and a 
 fourth with them, and they organize. The idea has 
 become a force in the world. It has the seed of 
 events in it. If men are willing to sacrifice their 
 time for it, to give up their comforts for it, to live for 
 it, and, if need be, to die for it, the group that fostered 
 it multiplies by division, in some curious way, into a 
 multitude of groups, all pressing the idea into life. 
 There is the state association, two, three, perhaps four 
 state associations — all advocating the righteous- 
 ness of the idea. Then comes a call for a national 
 association, and the wildfire is out. State associa- 
 tions spring up everywhere. A national bureau is 
 set up promoting the idea, fostering its propaganda, 
 bound to its work in the world, and then follows a 
 national law, and the private organization becomes 
 a public institution. 
 
 Ideas in various stages of incubation may be seen 
 all over the country. Where the demand for pure 
 food was ten years ago, the contest against tubercu- 
 losis is to-day. And ten years from now, tubercu-
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 135 
 
 losis may be as arch an enemy to the laws of the 
 republic as adulterated food is to-day. And here 
 is another curious thing about the advancement of 
 ideas: Just as the same hundred men or so are the 
 directors of all our big banks, of all our great railroads, 
 and of many of our public service corporations — 
 directing the centripetal forces of American society, — 
 so another group of a hundred men, more or less, is 
 found directing many of the societies, associations, 
 conventions, assemblies, and leagues behind the be- 
 nevolent movements — the centrifugal forces of Amer- 
 ican society. It is Morgan, the Goulds, the Harri- 
 man interests, Winslow Pierce, Ryan, Stillman, and 
 their associates, against Seth Low, William Dudley, 
 Foulke, the Pinchot interests, Samuel McCune Lind- 
 say, Jane Addams, Clinton Rogers Woodruff, and 
 their associates. They are captains of two opposing 
 groups — capital and democracy — each necessary 
 to the life of the nation, each performing his organic 
 function in our body politic — the assimilation of the 
 great discovery of steam into our social body. 
 
 Thus our history is made by men organized in 
 parliamentary form bound together by an idea, often 
 opposing a force not always organized save by the 
 instinct of fear under attack which makes the com- 
 munity of interest in business and in politics. For
 
 136 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 instance: One of the most important laws put on 
 our federal statutes in two decades is the Hepburn 
 railroad law. It prohibits discrimination between 
 individual shippers reasonably well. It is correcting 
 a serious and sinister abuse in our national com- 
 merce. The law is fairly well observed. The senti- 
 ment of the people is behind it. Here is the leaven 
 that changed the national lump. Before the pas- 
 sage of the Hepburn law, there was an organization 
 among American business men known as the " In- 
 terstate Commerce Convention." It was composed 
 of state and local commercial and trade organiza- 
 tions — boards of trade, fruit growers, lumbermen, 
 and the like, in thirty-four states, and in addition 
 to these it comprised thirty-five national associa- 
 tions ; like the American Hereford cattle breeders, the 
 National Association of Manufacturers, the national 
 Paint, Oil, and Varnish Association, the National 
 Hay Association, and similar organizations that one 
 rarely hears of in the newspapers. This Association 
 of associations, called the "Interstate Commerce 
 Convention," met from time to time and formulated 
 its demands. In those demands was sacrifice for 
 some associations, abnegation of special privileges 
 by others, selfishness in some quarters and mean- 
 ness in others, but on the whole what they asked
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 137 
 
 for was fair. They appealed to the nation. The 
 people were convinced. The newspapers began to 
 voice the sentiment of the people. The president 
 recognized the sentiment, and realized its justice. 
 The railroads controlled the machinery of politics. 
 They had hundreds of subsidized newspapers. They 
 hired men to establish bureaus and to write contro- 
 versial articles, and paid editors to print a refutation 
 of the justice of the shippers' demands. Money was 
 spent without stint. Millions might have been used, 
 if they had been usable. The Interstate Commerce 
 Convention had raised $22,855. 1 Gossip said at the 
 time, and the lobbyists for the railroads boasted, that 
 they had two millions. Probably they had no such 
 sum. But they might have had ten. And yet the 
 $22,000 of the shippers was enough. Half as much 
 would have done as well. For money in America 
 does not make sentiment. Printing presses are as 
 useless as cheese presses in making sentiment. Pub- 
 he sentiment comes out of the consciences of the 
 people, and it cannot be fed to them in any sort of 
 medicinal form from newspapers, magazines, or books. 
 So the railroads surrendered with all their money. 
 The Hepburn law was enacted. The genius of the 
 people for parliamentary organization, outside of 
 
 1 See Appendix, p. 262.
 
 138 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 constitutions and law saved them. They sacrificed 
 something — did these hundreds of thousands of 
 people in the organization — not money, but time, 
 and convenience, and special privileges, — passes, in- 
 side rates, rebates, concessions, and what not of the 
 crumbs of commerce, and by giving to the common 
 good they won for the common good. 
 
 Take another instance. The people of this coun- 
 try were eating poisoned food. The president, the 
 secretary, and the treasurer met, discussed the matter, 
 and the Pure Food Association, greatly to be sniffed 
 at by the intrenched forces of culinary poison, began 
 its work. It had no money. It had no newspapers. 
 Newspapers and magazines ten years ago were taking 
 millions of dollars in advertising from manufacturers 
 of improper foods and drugs. But the pure food 
 show began to appear in American cities and towns, 
 just as the tuberculosis exhibit is moving over the 
 country to-day. The people learned the truth. 
 The wholesale grocers' associations took up the fight, 
 and in spite of all the money behind the manu- 
 facturers of the adulterated and poisonous food, the 
 pure food and drug act passed congress in June, 
 1906, and became a law. The sacrifice of hundreds 
 of men and women, who were willing to give their 
 time, their service, and their names to the cause of
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 139 
 
 pure food for the masses, was more potent than all 
 the legislative machinery, all the lobby of retailers, 
 all the flood of telegrams from cattle growers, and all 
 the forces of selfishness. 
 
 Observe still another illustration of the force of 
 public sentiment in our American life. There is the 
 National Civil Service Reform League. The forces 
 of plunder and graft in the United States hate that 
 league and all its works. The high-caste politicians 
 of the states, of the cities, and of the nation make 
 this league the particular object of their curses. If 
 organized politics, with all its power and with all its 
 machinery, could stop the spread of the civil service, 
 it would be a dead issue. Yet this little handful of 
 men in the Civil Service League — most of them 
 highly incompetent in the machinations of practical 
 politics — has organized the sentiment of the Ameri- 
 can people for justice in the public service, and as a 
 result during the last eight years much has been 
 accomplished. In 1901, sixteen hundred positions 
 in the war department were restored to the classified 
 service after removal from it in 1899; in 1902 two 
 hundred and fifty employees of the temporary gov- 
 ernment in Cuba were added to the classified list, 
 and labor regulations were made for the Washington 
 departments. The next year the Shipping Commis-
 
 140 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 sioners were restored to the classified service and the 
 Philippine teachers added, and in 1904 the classifi- 
 cation of the subordinates in the Isthmian Commis- 
 sion began, and the year following the whole labor 
 service was put under control of the Civil Service 
 Commission. Since then the fourth-class postmasters 
 have been protected from political assaults, and a rule 
 has been established, putting presidential postmasters 
 under the merit system; under this rule they are re- 
 appointed without reference to congressional indorse- 
 ment or opposition, if their records are in the first grade 
 of the service. And under the influence of the National 
 Civil Service Commission, we are taking the first 
 census ever taken in America not compiled by spoils- 
 men. The states of Wisconsin, Illinois, New Jersey, 
 Colorado and Kansas have adopted laws which pro- 
 tect certain employees in certain public institutions 
 from removal for political reasons, and in a measure 
 establishing the merit system. Moreover, San Fran- 
 cisco, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, At- 
 lanta, Baltimore, Duluth, St. Louis, Wilmington, 
 N. C, Oklahoma City, Portland, Philadelphia, Scran- 
 ton, Pittsburg, Norfolk and all of the sixty cities oper- 
 ating under the commission plan of government, have 
 established civil service rules for one or more of the city 
 departments. All of this leaven of righteousness is
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 141 
 
 worked by public sentiment, and the particular organ- 
 ism that promotes that sentiment is the National Civil 
 Service League, which never spends over $9,000 a 
 year. Money plays a small part in directing the 
 actual current of American public life. 
 | In 1901 and the two years following, commercial 
 bodies and labor unions all over the land began 
 petitioning Congress to establish some sort of a 
 bureau of commerce. And in 1903 the Department 
 of Commerce and Labor was established. It marks 
 the greatest advance in our government's relation to 
 the individual that has been taken for a generation. 
 For the right of the government to examine the 
 books and accounts of every American business con- 
 cern and upon its own judgment of expediency to 
 withhold or make public the result of its examina- 
 tion, in effect is legalized. The precedence of the 
 common good over the private right, the rights of 
 democracy against the rights of capital in even 
 private business, is established in law. This estab- 
 lishment makes all business public business so far 
 as its status before the law is concerned. The altru- 
 ism of democracy has no stronger fortress in America 
 than the law upon which the Department of Com- 
 merce and Labor is founded. Yet it was founded 
 without excitement, without clamor, because the 
 
 /
 
 142 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 president, the secretary, and the treasurer of a thou- 
 sand business organizations — willing to reform them- 
 selves, to subject themselves to inspection and regu- 
 lation, asked for it^ 
 
 And now we come to the core of the so-called 
 reform movement in America; for it is at bottom a 
 national movement. What we find in ballot laws 
 and democratic tendencies in states, what we find 
 in regulative and restrictive legislation in the various 
 commonwealths, what we find in the reshaping of 
 charters and remaking of municipal governments 
 are but the local symptoms of our national ado- 
 lescence. They are growing pains of the new life 
 that is upon us. When President Roosevelt inter- 
 fered in the anthracite coal strike early in his adminis- 
 tration, he did not create the sentiment which backed 
 him up so loyally in his extra-constitutional act. A 
 score of organizations for a decade had been making 
 sentiment which recognized the common good as 
 paramount to the private right. The right of 
 property as against the right of the people was a 
 shell. It was worm-eaten by public sentiment, and 
 however the coal operators might chatter about 
 their divine rights, the real divine right was that of 
 the people to keep warm at a reasonable price. 
 Chief among the organizations propagating the right
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 143 
 
 of the people to industrial peace was and is the 
 National Civic Federation. It is composed largely 
 of rich men who have vision to see that they must 
 surrender to the common good much of their vested 
 rights, and generally these men find joy in it. Among 
 other members of the Federation are labor leaders 
 who see that they too and their constituents must 
 give in before the common good, and take joy in the 
 giving. That sentiment is abroad in America; it is 
 the soul of our new-born democracy. So that one 
 who looks at the large national movements of the 
 decade now closing will find that those movements 
 which have become national laws are laws looking 
 to the distribution rather than the accumulation of 
 wealth. Practically all the large national organi- 
 zations which jam the trains annually going to their 
 conventions are fundamentally altruistic. There are 
 a million Masons in the United States. There are 
 six million members of fraternal insurance companies 
 distributing annually nearly $6,000,000 in sick and 
 death benefits, and giving almost as much more in 
 free fraternal service from man to man in time of 
 trouble. For this democratic tendency of our times 
 does not express itself well in dollars and cents. 
 But always it is ready to respond to any call, whether 
 political or social or economic, when the voice is clear
 
 144 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 and the motive unblurred. When Theodore Roose- 
 velt came to the White House, he merely saw the 
 obvious thing, and did it, and became a force for 
 righteousness — the first leader the nation has de- 
 veloped since Lincoln — because he had a righteous 
 people behind him. 
 
 The important measures accomplished by the 
 Roosevelt administration are these: the regulation 
 of corporations, the beginning of the Panama Canal, 
 the enactment of the pure food law, the reclamation 
 of the desert by irrigation, the preservation of the for- 
 ests and water rights, the extension of the civil service, 
 the establishment of peace under the Portsmouth 
 treaty. These may be called the Roosevelt policies. 
 Yet they are not his. He merely adopted them. 
 He found in every case a strong parliamentary 
 organization, working for these things. Moreover, 
 in every case these organizations were poor in funds 
 and rich in men, and were fighting intrenched in- 
 terests rich in funds if often poor in men. The strug- 
 gle of the Interstate Commerce Convention with 
 its pitiful little $22,000 against the millions of the 
 railroads has been noted. The same forces that 
 fought the Hepburn law and the establishment of 
 the department of Commerce and Labor opposed 
 the Panama Canal undertaking. For the canal will
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 145 
 
 play havoc with transcontinental rates. And the 
 packers and poison dealers who opposed the pure 
 food and drug law were beaten by the same little 
 David, in another coat, who slew the railroad Goliath 
 in the first two battles. The Irrigation Congress had 
 to fight the cattle men and the sheep men who had 
 the ranges and desired to keep them, but the men 
 with vision won, and the fields were cut into "quar- 
 ters" and "eighties" and the desert blossomed as 
 the rose. In the contest for the preservation of the 
 forests, the timber cutters have had nine points of 
 the law. They have had possession, and they have 
 had unlimited funds. And the American Forestry 
 Association, the Appalachian National Forest Asso- 
 ciation, the International Society of Arboriculture, 
 the Joint Committee on Conservation, and the 
 Society of American Foresters have had less funds 
 than it takes to give a national lumbermen's ban- 
 quet — yet the feeble folk built their homes among 
 the rocks of simple justice and are winning, and in- 
 evitably must win. When he established peace at 
 Portsmouth, President Roosevelt was not alone. 
 There was with him the sentiment of a nation fos- 
 tered by the American Peace Society, maintaining 
 eighteen lecturers in the field, the Association for 
 International Conciliation, the Universal Peace Union,
 
 146 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 and the Lake Mohonk Peace Conference, not to men- 
 tion thirty-two million of church communicants in 
 the nation. The history of the Roosevelt adminis- 
 tration, with its wonderful advance in our national 
 institutions, has been the history of the expression 
 of the people rather than the growth of the people. 
 Like Homer, when he "smote his bloomin' lyre," 
 Theodore Roosevelt found the people bursting with 
 pent-up righteousness, "and what he thought he 
 might require, he went and took." And yet with- 
 out the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, without 
 his personality to dramatize the growing righteous- 
 ness of the people, it is not difficult to imagine what 
 calamity of misdirected radicalism might have been 
 visited upon the nation. If that righteous wrath 
 of the people at the selfish forces of society had not 
 found expression through President Roosevelt, it 
 would have been voiced through demagogues at an 
 awful cost to the nation. His genius lies not in 
 making sentiment, but in directing it into sane, 
 conservative, workable laws. 
 
 Since the Spanish War, the whole movement of 
 the people from crass materialism — so evident in 
 our business and politics and religion — is the move- 
 ment of an organizing people. It has been as mys- 
 teriously regular as the growth of life in its inanimate
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 147 
 
 form. It is as though the social body were the host 
 of a myriad altruistic bacteria, each somewhat dif- 
 ferent from the other, but all having a strong cen- 
 trifugal movement, and all united to produce a demo- 
 cratic tendency that is not a disease, but a growth. 
 The blood of our national life is thick with these 
 germs that are consuming the poison of selfish decay 
 as manifest in sheer gross capitalism that threatened 
 us, and these altruistic bacteria show, not senility, but 
 youth in us. 
 
 It is therefore proper to examine a few of the 
 hundreds of more prominent organizations having 
 a national scope and character, and aiming at distinct 
 betterments of our common life. For these organi- 
 zations are prophetic. What the civil service re- 
 formers have done, what the peace advocates are 
 doing, what the conservators of national resources 
 are in the way of doing, what the commercial bodies 
 of the nation have well under way, in the matter of 
 railroad regulation, ocean competition, and corporate 
 restriction, the other organized forces of righteous- 
 ness may well expect to accomplish. For they are 
 all common symptoms of a national condition, and 
 whatsoever is worthy and of good report will prevail. 
 
 One of the most ominous shadows casting itself 
 before some coming event in our national life is
 
 148 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 the American Federation of Labor. And it is im- 
 portant, not because it affects so many people, 
 though probably ten million Americans are directly 
 affected by the life of the Federation ; it is important 
 because of the way these ten millions of people are 
 affected. For all of them, men who work and their 
 wives, sisters, children, sweethearts, fathers and 
 mothers, and sympathizing friends, make the Feder- 
 ation, or some one of its component parts, their re- 
 ligion. They are willing to sacrifice not only their 
 comfort for it, but time and again they do sacrifice 
 their very necessities for it. Their conduct — which 
 is nine-tenths of life — is regulated by the Federa- 
 tion, and their creed in religion and politics is more 
 or less biased by it. The material results of their 
 altruistic faith in the Federation may be seen in the 
 fact that the members paid $1,257,244 in death 
 benefits in 1908, and $593,541 in sick benefits, 
 $205,254 in unemployed benefits, and $2,549,759 
 in strike benefits. Here is a grand total of 
 four and a half million dollars raised by men 
 to whom a dollar means more than a hundred 
 dollars means to the forces these men are con- 
 tending with. And when one considers what a 
 vast amount of time and thought and service has 
 come in proportion to this money for this cause,
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 149 
 
 one must recognize that eventually the men who 
 devote that sacrifice in money, and that time and 
 thought and personal service to the common good, 
 must accomplish real results. For whatever error 
 now is impeding them, whether error in their own 
 demands or error in the claims of their opponents, 
 must go down before such an organized force. For 
 this is not a material world. In the organization of 
 this thing we call civilization, there is no force so 
 resistless as kindness; and this vast kindness of the 
 workers to their brethren — whatever of cruelty, 
 whatever of meanness, it may call forth, either on 
 their own side or on the side of their antagonists — 
 in spite of the evil, the kindness must win some sub- 
 stantial reward in the end. Laws may be tem- 
 porarily denied to them, courts may check them, and 
 executives rest within their legal restrictions, but in 
 the end, whatever there is of unselfish justice in the 
 demands of labor for a humane day, a clean environ- 
 ment, and a living wage, will come to them under 
 national law. For when one considers how far labor 
 has come in fifty years in this country, how large has 
 been its actual as well as its comparative betterment 
 as the result of organization, the future becomes 
 something more than a guess. For to-day labor 
 organization is of a higher type, the leaders have
 
 150 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 a broader outlook, and the devotion of the men 
 and women inside the organization is of a more 
 intelligent kind than ever it was before. 
 
 So labor to-day is enlisting in its cause thousands 
 who are not allied with the trades. The Child Labor 
 Committee and the Consumers' League and the 
 National Civic Federation, for instance, are organi- 
 zations outside the trades, that are making an en- 
 lightened public sentiment for the demands of labor. 
 The Child Labor Committee has secured the passage 
 of laws restricting the employment of children in 
 practically every American state, and there is talk 
 of a Bureau for the Consideration of Children in the 
 national government. The Consumers' League is 
 devoting itself successfully to the work of securing 
 recognition for the union label from the buying 
 public ; but the most important work done for labor 
 outside of the labor unions is being done by the 
 National Civic Federation. And that work is not 
 the settlement within the past two years by arbitra- 
 tion of street-car strikes in San Francisco, New 
 York, Chicago, Newark, New Orleans, and Pitts- 
 burg; nor the settlement of strikes in the textile 
 trades and building trades. The work of the Civic 
 Federation until recently was rather beneficent than 
 scientific. But the real work of the Federation be-
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 151 
 
 gan when at the invitation of President Seth Low, 
 John Mitchell took charge of a department known 
 as the department of Trades Agreement for Indus- 
 trial Peace. This department headed by Mr. Mitchell 
 in an organization financed by a sufficiently large per 
 cent of the employers of labor in the country to 
 make a governing minority, marks a definite meet- 
 ing place for labor and capital, wherein they may 
 treat as equals. In selecting Mr. Mitchell and giving 
 him authority to act, the employers have met with 
 fairness the self-sacrifice of labor, and a real basis of 
 agreement may be found. It will be in effect an 
 extra-legal national bureau of arbitration. It is the 
 history of our government that we have always 
 taken over for government use any good thing de- 
 veloped by the people. For this idea is following 
 the well-known life history of our institutions. First 
 we have the society or organization; next comes the 
 private establishment securing results; then follows 
 the law, putting the whole matter under the federal 
 government. Our national government is jealous 
 of large success outside of its domain, in any public 
 matter. And whether it be the director of the 
 Office of Public Roads, who is annually promoting 
 the construction of thousands of miles of first-class 
 public roads, or the superintendent of the Life Sav-
 
 152 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 ing Service who is annually directing the underpaid 
 federal employes who save hundreds of lives, or 
 whether it is the chief of the Bureau of Chemistry 
 that enforces the pure food and drug law — wher- 
 ever the government finds an organization working 
 unselfishly to an end that is unmistakably for the 
 common good, that organization eventually becomes 
 a part of the federal government. So the department 
 of Trades Agreement of the National Civic Federa- 
 tion has only to prove its value for the 'government 
 to legalize it. 
 
 Even the Consumers' League is not safe. It may 
 be taken over in time. For it is awakening buyers 
 to the cruelty of late shopping in the Christmas 
 season; it is working for a shorter day for women; 
 and through its influence Louis D. Brandeis of Boston 
 gave his services as ancillary counsel of the attorney- 
 general of Oregon, and directed the work of prepar- 
 ing the brief upon which the United States Supreme 
 Court rested a unanimous decision in favor of the 
 law which limits the hours of labor for women and 
 children; so that now no legislator need refuse to 
 support a short-hours bill for women and children on 
 the grounds of its constitutionality. And the work 
 of the twenty-six leagues under the National League 
 in twenty-two states is now turned toward securing
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 153 
 
 state laws in harmony with the United States Supreme 
 Court decision. When one considers the crass 
 brute force of the organized greed which this league 
 is opposing, with its meager funds, and its simple 
 faith, one longs to see the combat quicken to its 
 inevitable end. For it will be an object lesson in the 
 impotence of wealth and material power that will 
 put heart into millions of men and women who fear 
 to trust their instincts. 1 Coordinate with the Con- 
 sumers' League, but in no way related to it, is the 
 Legal Aid Society, with branches in New York, 
 Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Cleveland, 
 Hoboken, Cincinnati, Rochester, Buffalo, Newark, 
 Washington, Portland, New Rochelle, San Francisco, 
 and Los Angeles. This society seeks to redress 
 without cost the legal wrongs to the poor, and in 
 New York alone it handles about thirty thousand 
 cases and recovers from the oppressors of the poor 
 nearly $100,000 annually. It has the seed of a state 
 activity, and even now free legal advice for the 
 people is being agitated by certain bar associations. 
 
 The obvious altruism of organizations like this in 
 our democracy indicates a spirit of mutual helpful- 
 ness in the hearts of the people, which makes it seem 
 
 'See "Some Ethical Gains through Legislation," by Florence 
 Kelley. Published by Macmillan.
 
 154 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 queer that with all our local charitable organizations 
 spending millions to help the needy, the Salvation 
 Army is almost the only organization with a national 
 scope which makes it a business to look after the 
 poor. For our poverty is interstate, as much as our 
 commerce, and until it is handled with a national 
 spirit and studied from the broad national outlook, 
 its causes will not be thoroughly understood. So 
 while the Salvation Army spends annually nearly a 
 million dollars upon the nation's poor, feeding three 
 hundred thousand of them at Christmas dinners, fur- 
 nishing daily work for over one thousand, and supply- 
 ing during a year over two million beds, and support- 
 ing one hundred industrial homes, wood yards, and 
 employment stores and twenty-one rescue homes, 
 still this is but a fraction of the work needed. The 
 establishment of the Pittsburg Foundation for the 
 study of the social and economic condition of the 
 wage-earning classes probably marks the beginning 
 of a deeper and saner interest in our national poverty, 
 and its causes and possible cures, than we have had 
 before. For our sense of national charity must 
 awaken and have a being as definite as any other 
 organ of our national spirit. The Pittsburg Foun- 
 dation at least has done this: it has shown that we 
 have a national system — an American system — of
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 155 
 
 dealing with labor. That system makes labor bear 
 the charges of breakage and wreckage and wear and 
 tear in labor. But when once the American people 
 understand that this system is peculiar to us, that 
 other nations compel the different trades to bear the 
 expense of wear and tear and breakage of men as they 
 bear the wear and tear and breakage of machinery, 
 our system will change; the employers' liability will be 
 legally established, and the mockery of damage suits 
 in federal courts by maimed employees against their 
 negligent employers will cease; the doctrine of the 
 assumed risk of the laborer in any trade will vanish; 
 and at least one fruitful source of poverty — the 
 maintenance of the crippled — will disappear. Those 
 in charge of the Pittsburg survey now seem to think 
 that the city "is the only thing big enough to counter- 
 balance organized industry, and make life sane and 
 normal and beautiful." But perhaps when the 
 national government feels the impulse of the people 
 who have been enlightened by the saddest facts in 
 all our statistics, the nation may leave the city less 
 to do than they think who see the situation to-day. ' 
 It is reasonable to believe that this century may 
 
 1 The efforts of Mrs. Russell Sage, Mr. Carnegie, and Mr. Rocke- 
 feller to inquire into poverty scientifically and from a national 
 viewpoint seem to indicate that some sense of our economic and 
 social status is permeating the nation.
 
 156 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 see an improvement in the condition of the weak 
 and defenseless in our industrial system which the 
 last century saw in the care of the mentally and 
 morally and physically infirm and helpless. The 
 state has advanced so far in its care of insane, of deaf 
 and blind, of the morally imperfect, that millions of 
 dollars are spent upon these unfortunate people. 
 The best thought of the best scientists of the nation 
 is given them freely and willingly, and no tax upon 
 the people is so gratefully paid as that which goes to 
 make existence easier for our feebler kin. And im- 
 provement is moving so rapidly that we who do not 
 watch it scarcely realize that the state separates its 
 insane into groups, that it generally paroles its first 
 offending criminals, that it allows no children in jail, 
 that it has all but stopped prison horrors, and that 
 the punitive spirit is passing from all of our legal 
 institutions. Says Secretary Alexander Johnson of 
 the National Conference of Charities and Correc- 
 tions: "You may fairly state that on the whole 
 there is a trend toward good business administration 
 (of our prisons and charitable institutions) with the 
 elimination of partisanship." The people are get- 
 ting what they ask for. The private neglect of ages 
 and public abuses of the middle years of the last 
 century are giving way to the expression of the
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 157 
 
 public sympathy and generous care. And what the 
 people feel for the helpless they will feel for those 
 who are ground to helplessness in our industrial life. 
 The altruism of our national character as citizens of 
 a democracy may find a way to do what economists 
 and legal doctrinaires have not been able to accom- 
 plish. The service pension system and general wel- 
 fare work for the employes is coming into our rail- 
 roads as a voluntary establishment so rapidly that 
 its legalization will hardly mark a practical advance 
 when it comes. Within five years the service pen- 
 sion has come to the railroad employes on systems 
 aggregating nearly one fifth of the mileage of the 
 United States, and welfare work is now done for the 
 employes of practically every American railroad. 
 
 An admirable (because it is in a sense typical) 
 instance of what great aggregations of capital are 
 doing for their employes is found in the situation 
 indicated by the remarks of Mr. George B. Cortelyou 
 at the tenth annual meeting of the National Civic 
 Federation in November, 1909. He said in part, 
 speaking of the Consolidated Gas Company of New 
 York, of which he is president: "The Company 
 manifests interest in its employees in three ways: 
 first, by assisting them in maintaining an employees' 
 Aid Society; second, by providing annuities for
 
 158 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 superannuated employees ; third, by making allow- 
 ances for vacations and sickness. The Company 
 maintains for its employees what is called a Mor- 
 tuary Fund. Each member pays fifty cents per 
 month, and at death his beneficiaries receive the sum 
 of $300. Towards this fund the Company contrib- 
 utes one half of the amount paid in by the em- 
 ployees as dues. Upon leaving the service of the 
 Company the employee receives back all that he has 
 paid into this fund, without interest. 
 
 "Also there is maintained a Friendly Aid Fund 
 for the benefit of the employees. Into this fund 
 each employee pays thirty cents per month, or $3.60 
 a year. For this amount the member is entitled 
 during sickness or disability to $6 each week for 
 twelve weeks in any one year. The Company also 
 contributes one half of the amount paid in by the 
 employees as dues, and also pays the salaries, ex- 
 penses, and medicines of the physicians who attend 
 the sick members of this society. Upon leaving the 
 service of the Company the employee receives back 
 the amount paid into the fund without interest, 
 less the amount he may have received for such bene- 
 fits. Membership in both of these organizations is 
 wholly voluntary. In addition to the foregoing, both 
 of these funds have become possessed of a surplus
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 159 
 
 cash balance, which is invested with the Company 
 temporarily, and on which the Company obligates 
 itself to pay five per cent interest. 
 
 " Employees who give thirty-five years of service 
 are, if incapacitated for further work, entitled, at 
 the discretion of the Company, to be placed on the 
 superannuated list. The usual course is to compute 
 the allowance made at one per cent for each year of 
 service, based on the average pay for the five years 
 preceding retirement. For example: An employee 
 has been forty years in service and has received 
 during the past five years an amount of $20 per 
 week. If upon examination by the Company's 
 physician he is found to be incapacitated for further 
 service, the Treasurer makes recommendation, based 
 on the application of the Superintendent of the De- 
 partment in which the employee has been working, 
 that he be placed upon the Superannuation List at 
 forty per cent of the $20, equal to $8 per week, 
 which amount is paid by check on the first day of 
 each month. The beneficiary can live wherever he 
 pleases and is not required to report to the Company 
 other than by the receipt for the checks sent. The 
 Company pursues a liberal policy in the matter of 
 vacations for absence on account of sickness. 
 
 "The ordinary plan of relief in case of sickness
 
 160 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 or disability other than by accident is this: one 
 month of full pay or two months of half pay is al- 
 lowed for each five years of service. For example, 
 an employee who has been twenty-five years in the 
 service of the Company and is taken sick is examined 
 by the Company's physician and report made to the 
 Treasurer. Upon that report an allowance of sick 
 benefit is given him from time to time to provide 
 full pay (counting in the $6 per week from the Friendly 
 Aid Society) for five months, or half pay for ten 
 months. At the end of the five or ten months a 
 new examination is made, and if the employee is 
 still disabled, either a special additional allowance is 
 made, or he is dropped from the rolls. In disability 
 from accident each case is carefully considered by 
 the proper officers and action taken based upon the 
 circumstances. It is the policy of the Company to 
 deal generously with its employees." 
 
 Here we see the socialization of capital itself. 
 The democratic movement is by no means — or 
 even largely — confined to the poor. Neither is 
 capital the property of the rich. Capital is the 
 savings of all classes; democracy is the altruism of 
 all classes, and even in capital itself we find the 
 abnegation of democracy. Moreover, capital is find- 
 ing that altruism pays ; the service pension is a good
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 161 
 
 thing for capital. And in the industries experience 
 has proved that the service pension and the welfare 
 work pay — and that guarantees their adoption. 
 When the economic value of kindness is demonstrated, 
 the instinct of democracy to help the needy will 
 have no political opposition. 
 
 A generation ago when the college curriculum be- 
 gan to broaden and the laboratory began to take an 
 important place in college life, educated men bewailed 
 the material spirit of our education. There was a 
 movement to force education back to the humanities, 
 back to culture, back to "the sweet serenity of books." 
 But now the laboratory is returning to the democracy 
 that founded it, the service that is due. Our scientific 
 societies are almost purely altruistic. The health 
 and well-being of the masses is engaging scientists 
 all over the nation. A score of scientific societies, 
 state and national, have as their reason of being some 
 improvement in our public life. The Society for the 
 Prevention of Tuberculosis is doing effective work in 
 Washington, Oregon, California, North Dakota, South 
 Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, Okla- 
 homa, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Ten- 
 nessee, Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, 
 Connecticut, Maine, and West Virginia, where effect- 
 ive campaigns for state appropriations to stop the
 
 162 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 spread of the disease are waging. Appropriations of 
 over $4,000,000 for the suppression of consumption 
 have been made by twenty-eight state legislatures 
 in session during the year 1909, as the direct result of 
 work done by the National Association for the Study 
 and Prevention of Tuberculosis. 
 
 In 1909, forty- three state and territorial legisla- 
 tures were in session. Of this number twenty-eight 
 passed sixty-four laws pertaining to tuberculosis; 
 eight others considered such legislation, and in only 
 seven states no measures about consumption were 
 presented. 
 
 Of the sixty-four laws passed, fourteen were in 
 reference to building new state institutions. New 
 state sanatoria for tuberculosis will be built in Penn- 
 sylvania, Connecticut, where three will be erected, 
 Arkansas, Oregon, South Dakota, North Dakota, 
 and Florida. In New York, North Carolina, In- 
 diana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, 
 appropriations have been made for enlarging sanatoria 
 already being built or in operation. There are now 
 twenty-seven states where such institutions have been 
 established. Every state east of the Mississippi, 
 except Illinois, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 South Carolina, and Mississippi have provided hos- 
 pitals for tuberculosis patients.
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 163 
 
 Five states, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, 
 and Iowa, passed laws giving their county officers 
 power to erect tuberculosis sanatoria without resort- 
 ing to a special vote. In Maine, Connecticut, Rhode 
 Island, New Jersey, Michigan, Iowa, and Kansas laws 
 providing for the strict reporting and registration of 
 tuberculosis were passed. Only five other states, in- 
 cluding the District of Columbia, have such laws. 
 The National Association considers laws of this 
 character as the first requisite in an organized move- 
 ment against tuberculosis. 
 
 Ten states have this year granted nearly $100,000 
 to be spent only for the education of the public about 
 tuberculosis. During the past year fully one third 
 of the $4,000,000 appropriated this year is by special 
 legislation and for new work. The last Congress ap- 
 propriated, in addition to this sum, nearly $1,000,000 
 for the maintenance of the three federal sanatoria in 
 New Mexico and Colorado. It is estimated besides 
 that the numerous county and municipal appropria- 
 tions made or to be made for tuberculosis work for 
 next year will aggregate at least '$3,000,000, mak- 
 ing the official public expenditures in the United 
 States for the wiping out of tuberculosis at least 
 $8,000,000. 
 
 And all this practical manifestation of altruism,
 
 164 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 the large unselfishness, good will, or whatever it may 
 be called, comes from the energies of less than a 
 thousand active men and women largely from college 
 laboratories devoting not money but personal service 
 — their very lives to this good work. Ten million 
 in gift money would not have achieved so much. 
 "The sweet serenity of books" never has done so 
 much for this world in so short a time. 
 
 From the other end of the college campus, the stu- 
 dents of economics are coming into public life and one 
 group of them has formed and is maintaining the 
 National Tax Association, the Economic Association, 
 and the American Academy of Political and Social 
 Science, which hold national conferences and are 
 gathering most valuable data and forming most im- 
 portant conclusions in economics and sociology. The 
 future work of these and similar associations will be 
 inestimable. But it is altogether unselfish. There 
 is not a dollar in it for any one. Like all of the great 
 American democratic movements the study of eco- 
 nomics is for the good of the many at the sacrifice of 
 the few. And it is but one of a score of the activities 
 of men from the broader college and greater univer- 
 sity which democracy is establishing all over the land, 
 by local taxes or private gifts. 
 
 The organization known as "The Joint Committee
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 165 
 
 on Conservation" furnishes an admirable illustration 
 of what organized goodwill can do. The joint com- 
 mittee was organized in the spring of 1908 at a con- 
 ference of governors called at the White House by 
 President Roosevelt. Since that time official state 
 conservation commissions have been appointed by 
 the governors of forty states, and conservation com- 
 mittees have been named by fifty of the big na- 
 tional organizations of the country. There was a 
 second conference of governors and presidents of 
 national organizations, and there is now a North 
 American Conservation Conference, consisting of 
 commissioners from Canada, Mexico, and the United 
 States. Moreover plans are well under way for a 
 World^Conservation Congress to be held at The Hague. 
 This has all grown from the unselfish work of less 
 than one hundred men, mostly college men originally, 
 devoted to the cause of saving our forests and mines 
 and rivers. They have spent little money, but they 
 have given the best service that trained minds and 
 tireless bodies could give. 
 
 We have seen in passing but a few of the hundreds 
 of activities of the Americans as they are organized for 
 mutual help. But these activities are so many, and 
 the organizations so widespread that scarcely a citizen 
 escapes them. Whatever his inspiration to aid his
 
 166 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 fellow may be, he finds it organized, and in some or- 
 ganization he finds outlet for the desire to help, to be 
 of use in the world, to satisfy his soul by service. And 
 so these societies and associations and conferences 
 and conventions and assemblies do threefold duty. 
 First they express public sentiment after the parlia- 
 mentary fashion of the old Aryan, who moved after 
 "the most ancient ways" in due form and order. 
 Again they develop in Americans the self-sacrifice 
 and self-control and high altruism that is necessary 
 for a permanent democracy. And finally they also 
 unify the nation. For these organizations are na- 
 tional, and men of all sections meet one another and 
 work for the common good, as Americans, knowing 
 no section, caste, or special interest. But most of all 
 these societies and organizations help the man who 
 helps. It was the Samaritan rather than he who fell 
 among thieves who was benefited by the kindness on 
 the Jericho road. And so we, who by the millions are 
 manning these societies for the betterment of our kind, 
 are helping ourselves more, perhaps, than those we 
 would help. The just sympathy strike may help the 
 sympathizer, make him bigger, manlier, nobler, even 
 though it does not help the first striker. Likewise, 
 thousands of men are helping their souls as they help 
 others fight tuberculosis in their bodies. And so with
 
 THE LEAVEN IN THE NATIONAL LUMP 167 
 
 all our reforming of conditions about us, by the mil- 
 lions and millions we are first of all reforming our- 
 selves. We are promoting democracy by forgetting 
 ourselves in the thought of others. This self-abnega- 
 tion is the greatest movement in our national life. 
 And at bottom all this desire to heal our souls is but 
 the prick of the national conscience. The movement 
 in our national politics toward the more equitable 
 distribution of our common wealth is from the Puri- 
 tan's conscience. It is not solely, perhaps not even 
 chiefly, from those who are wronged, it is from all 
 classes. The conscience of the people knows no class. 
 And until the conscience is satisfied desire for re- 
 form will not abate. This movement for equity — 
 for democracy in our national life — is not a craze. 
 The reform movement is a deep tendency of our life; 
 it is our mysterious link with the infinite body of hu- 
 manity — the body in which, through some strange 
 spiritual alchemy, the good of one is the good of all. 
 The Divine leaven in a sordid generation, which in the 
 end shall leaven the whole lump, is our national in- 
 heritance through the home, from the mother of our 
 own blood, brought to this continent as equal and 
 partner through great suffering and sacrifice to make 
 a nation. This social leaven in so much as it is in- 
 stinctive and emotional is feminine; in that it is
 
 168 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 dominant and masterful it is bred of men. But what- 
 ever this conscience of democracy is, it is binding us 
 into a closer national union than we have known 
 before, making us one blood in our common aspiration. 
 And thus a race is renewing itself.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 There is grave danger that the advocate of funda- 
 mental democracy will make a fetish of it. Seeing 
 what the secret ballot will do, what the direct primary 
 will do, what the purging of the party system will do, 
 what direct legislation will do, and what all the state 
 commissions and city charters and parliamentary 
 organizations propagating the altruistic second self 
 of the nation will do, the man who observes these signs 
 and wonders of this latter day is liable to forget what 
 the sound, strong, righteous sense of the citizenship 
 that made all these signs and wonders will do — may 
 do even without these things. The protagonist in the 
 drama of democracy often is blinded by the limelight 
 of his own cause. He finds it hard to realize that free 
 institutions do not make free men, but that free men 
 make free institutions. The truth lies some place 
 between Hamilton and Jefferson, the strict Republican 
 and the uncompromising Democrat. And probably 
 Hamilton would have stated the truth when he wrote 
 that "the general genius of a government is all that 
 
 169
 
 170 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 can be substantially relied upon for permanent 
 effects," if he had written instead, "the general ge- 
 nius" of a people, for government, "is all that can be 
 relied upon substantially for permanent effects." 
 
 And in this American nation if the student of the 
 times would go to the bottom of our institutions, he 
 would find that we have changed and are changing 
 the form and constitution of our state and national 
 institutions. He would find that despite the federal 
 Constitution we are electing our Presidents by a 
 direct vote, and more than half of our United States 
 senators by a direct vote, thus bringing our federal 
 courts nearer to the populace. He would further 
 find that we are turning our state affairs over to com- 
 missions of experts and our city affairs over to direct 
 representatives with great power and often under the 
 recall. And yet in the face of these changes the stu- 
 dent of the times would find that we are conducting 
 the public schools after the ancient ways. In the 
 United States we spend nearly a half billion dollars 
 every year for schools — mostly in direct taxes. And 
 those direct taxes are levied by men elected by a 
 direct vote of the people. It is primitive folk-rule; 
 yet the sum we raise thus is the largest single item 
 in the tax budget, direct or indirect, that we raise 
 under the government. Moreover, it is the only fund
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 171 
 
 in our system of government that is so carefully 
 watched that dishonesty and extravagance do not 
 waste it materially. The strongest instinct of this 
 nation — one might almost call it an obsession — 
 is the instinct for education. So as a people we have 
 kept the common schools separate from the other 
 branches of our various governments. Anarchy 
 might wipe out our federal government, and in the 
 disorder the state institutions might suspend; even 
 the cities and counties might be paralyzed in the ca- 
 lamity. But in all the political upheaval the ma- 
 chinery of our public schools would not be affected 
 seriously. The $475,000,000 school tax would be 
 collected, the half million school-teachers would go to 
 work every morning, and the eighteen million students 
 would keep on preparing themselves to resist whatever 
 tyranny and oppression and injustice the political 
 cataclysm about them might produce. The framers 
 of the Constitution, with all their fine system of checks 
 and balances, clearly overlooked the mainspring of the 
 whole mechanism of democracy, and left it unham- 
 pered. It is practically the only political institu- 
 tion which is not in some way subject to more or 
 less complex control and interference by the state 
 or the Nation. And slowly as the people have 
 grown in intellectual strength, they have removed
 
 172 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 the checks and balances put upon the democratic 
 majorities in all wisdom by the fathers. It is absurd 
 to say that when the schools have made men worthier 
 than they were and than they are, safely to handle 
 larger affairs, men will not find a simple way to reach 
 the larger affairs. Constitutions are not amended 
 by wars — monarchies and kings are curbed by wars. 
 Constitutions are amended by the moral and intellec- 
 tual growth of the people living under them. 
 
 Therefore it will be well for one who desires to see 
 the wheels of the American government go 'round, to 
 look at the power that makes them go. "The Amer- 
 can people," says President Butler, of Columbia 
 University, " are almost Socratic in their acceptance 
 of the principle that knowledge will lead to right and 
 useful action; and if the formula be not pressed too 
 far, the American conviction as to education is quite 
 defensible." 1 At least it will not be pressing the 
 formula too far to maintain that if education produces 
 the power that makes the demagogue, it also makes 
 the common sense of the people who soon grow weary 
 of him. Therefrom we may argue that whatever 
 substantial growth there has been in our institutions, 
 — and one must admit that they have grown, — this 
 
 1 " The American as He Is," p. 68, by Nicholas Murray Butler. 
 Published by Macmillan.
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 173 
 
 growth has come because the people have broadened 
 their moral vision by reason of their widening infor- 
 mation. Schools have disseminated knowledge. 
 Knowledge directed the normally uneasy Puritan con- 
 science, and the people have grown powerful in so far 
 as they have grown just. Thus the net income from 
 our annual investment of half a billion dollars in 
 education may be reckoned in terms of justice. So 
 let us go to the account, and look at the books. To 
 begin let us consider the gross liabilities: There are 
 twenty-four millions of students, who according to the 
 school census of 1907 are of school age (that is, between 
 five and twenty-one) and should be in school, using 
 an educational plant valued at one and a half billions 
 of dollars. The report of the Commissioner of Educa- 
 tion for 1907 (p. 524) indicates that only eighteen mil- 
 lions of them are enrolled in school, sixteen millions of 
 them (p. 544) being enrolled in the common schools, 
 with an average daily attendance of nearly twelve mil- 
 lions. But that gross liability is overstated. For in 
 the shrinkage between the total population from five to 
 twenty-one years old, and the total school enrollment, 
 there are the Southern negroes whose education is 
 largely unprovided for, and there are the children under 
 eight years old who often are kept from school by 
 their parents. So that with our great plant, worth
 
 174 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 over a billion, and with our four hundred and seventy- 
 five million dollar annual outgo, we are reaching prob- 
 ably considerably more than three-fourths of the 
 number of actual school children from six to eighteen 
 years old for whom the taxes were levied. This does 
 not mean that one-fourth of our people are illiterate. 
 But it does mean that for some reason one-fourth of 
 them are not getting an equipment for citizenship that 
 they should get, and that the taxpayers should pro- 
 vide for them. Yet there can be no doubt that our 
 schools are crowded and that every child is in school 
 for whom we have provided desk room and teachers. 
 But there seems to be no doubt also that, we should 
 provide more desk room and either more teachers or 
 better paid teachers to attract and hold the children 
 who leave school in their early teens. Nor is this all. 
 Though education is practically free in America, and 
 as the opportunity to earn one's way through college 
 is wide, it is astonishing to note from the report just 
 referred to (p. 525) that only 3,000 persons annually 
 receive post-graduate degrees from our colleges and 
 free universities, and that only 25,000 of the twenty- 
 four million available students annually complete the 
 four years' college course. And now let Gradgrind 
 gorge himself with facts: Assuming that the average 
 life of the college graduate and his post-graduate as-
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 175 
 
 sociate is thirty years out of college, we may assume 
 that the generation now opening will be manned with 
 a million men and women who have at least finished 
 their college work. Assuming that the same number 
 of juniors, sophomores, and freshmen leave school an- 
 nually — about 25,000 in each class — that are gradu- 
 ated annually, we may add three million more to the 
 total, making four million college men and women 
 who will participate in our national life during the 
 first thirty years of this century. Add to these four 
 million college-bred men and women the one hundred 
 and sixty thousand high school graduates who the 
 report above mentioned says (p. 525) are entering 
 life every year, and the present generation may reason- 
 ably be computed to hold five million persons who 
 have taken full advantage of the common schools sup- 
 ported by direct taxes upon all of the people. Add 
 to this total those who annually drop out from the 
 four lower classes of the high school — a list as large 
 from each class as the annual graduating class — and 
 one has fifteen million others who have come into a 
 somewhat wider field of knowledge than that afforded 
 by the grade schools. Let us add to them for thirty 
 years the three-quarters of a million pupils who, ac- 
 cording to the report (p. 525) complete the work in 
 the seventh or eighth grades of the elementary schools.
 
 176 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 There will be 22,500,000 of them. Now adding all 
 these sums — allowing for the increase in population 
 to increase the number of youths as the years go on — 
 and we have about fifty million Americans who have 
 remained in school into the midst of their teens — 
 something like two-fifths of our probable population in 
 the next thirty years. This is not enough. Democ- 
 racy may live, but it cannot thrive upon that basis. 
 If we are to solve the problem of the century — the 
 restriction of ignorance and greed in our business 
 organization — we must solve it in the schoolhouse 
 rather than in the legislature or in the courtroom. 
 So long as there is a body of the people ignorant, that 
 ignorance will breed a greed that will be duped by 
 demagogy, and the greed equipped by cunning always 
 will outwit greed equipped by ignorance. The prob- 
 lems that this nation has solved have been for the 
 most part simple problems. They were problems in 
 production of wealth. It is true that the abolition of 
 slavery concerned the distribution of wealth. It 
 required only simple subtraction. But to deal justly 
 with capital in its public uses, to say what is the indi- 
 vidual's share in the public partnership and what is 
 the share of the commonwealth — that is long divi- 
 sion. As a nation, at least, we must get into the 
 eighth grade. Perhaps the average now is nearer 
 the sixth than the eighth.
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 177 
 
 And so there comes into the life of too large a per 
 cent of our boys and girls four or five waste years — 
 the years between thirteen and eighteen. These 
 waste years hold in them the real dangers of our 
 democracy. For out of school the boy at least is 
 worthless. Says Charles S. Morse, executive officer 
 of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial 
 Education: "If the boy goes out to attempt to learn 
 a trade at fourteen years of age, the manufacturer 
 says, 'I do not want you in my factory,' and the 
 manufacturer will not employ the boy except as an 
 errand boy. You ask me how I know this. Agents 
 of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial 
 Education canvassed the state recently, interviewing 
 some 1000 men who employed thousand upon thou- 
 sands of men, and there were only a few who did not 
 say: 'We do not want the fourteen-year-old boy; 
 he is in our way. He gets on our nerves.' " 
 
 And yet two or three millions of fourteen-year-old 
 boys and their sisters — who are really worth some- 
 thing — are out of school in America to-day. They 
 are out partly for economic reasons, the family needs 
 their support ; but the state needs a clear mind in the 
 ballot booth seven years later worse than the family 
 needs support, and the state might well afford to pay 
 the family the errand boy's meager wages. But apart
 
 178 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 from economic forces which keep the boy out of 
 school during the waste years of his life, there are 
 social reasons why he is not in school. And those 
 social reasons are his studies and his teachers, and at 
 the bottom of all is the selfishness of the taxpayers. 
 
 For when a child is not " doing well" in school, the 
 parents find it easy to put him to work outside. And 
 thus of the fifteen millions of children who according 
 to the report above mentioned leave school before they 
 complete the high school course, probably five mil- 
 lions leave not because they have to leave to support 
 the family, but because the parents feel that the 
 boys at least are better off working out of school than 
 idling and wrangling with their teachers in school. 
 Generally speaking, the fault is with the school 
 rather than with the boy. Certainly the fact that five 
 million boys in their early teens do leave school un- 
 necessarily is a fact worth considering in making up a 
 curriculum. And if the fads and isms are driving the 
 boy from school, the nation is the loser. Therefore 
 the instinct of the boy for physical education as well 
 as for mental training should be heeded. The boy 
 longs for manly things. He craves the company of 
 men and the roughness of men. He desires to do some- 
 thing — to see something growing under his hand. 
 It is instinctive, and the most hopeful thing in our
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 179 
 
 democracy is not the growth of the secret ballot, the 
 cleansed party, the direct nomination and direct 
 legislation, but the vague and definitely growing 
 recognition that the boy's instinct for practical educa- 
 tion in his school is to be trusted. The almost univer- 
 sal introduction of manual training in some form into 
 the lower grades of American schools — giving the 
 boy opportunity to work with his hands — is one of 
 the most important symptoms of health in our politi- 
 cal organization. The extent of the growth of manual 
 training in the country is surprising. Within ten 
 years — coincident with the other big democratic 
 movements — manual training has spread to the 
 schools of almost every American state. 
 
 Typically manual training begins in the sixth grade, 
 when the pupils are coming into their teens. It con- 
 tinues through the eighth grade, and there in the larger 
 of our American cities manual training is diverted 
 into a separate building from the regular high school 
 building. This is known as the manual training 
 school. There boys are taught to use their hands in 
 woodwork, stonework, brickwork, ironwork, clay 
 work of various kinds, and girls are taught domestic 
 science. But these schools must not be confused 
 with the great trades schools that are being estab- 
 lished in the cities of the land and in the manufactur-
 
 180 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 ing districts. The manual training schools do not 
 teach the boys trades; they merely teach them to use 
 their hands, so that when they go into trades they will 
 learn easily. The trade schools make them appren- 
 tices, and these trade schools are found now in every 
 important American city and in every state, either 
 under the name of technical institutes, agricultural 
 schools, or trade schools. This chain of public schools 
 teaching rough hard work is keeping American boys in 
 school, and is doing more to educate them for citizen- 
 ship than any other force in the country. As the 
 higher mechanical schools fit into the school system 
 are they most valuable as citizen makers. 
 
 It is remarkable how universally this manual train- 
 ing in the grades has come into our educational sys- 
 tem. In 1908 in addition to manual training in the 
 grades Virginia had manual departments in twenty-five 
 high schools. North Dakota had ten manual train- 
 ing high schools, and three cities in North Carolina 
 had adopted manual training throughout the course; 
 in Indiana forty towns and cities had manual work in 
 the grades with ten manual training high schools. 
 Massachusetts taught manual work in sixty towns 
 and had twenty-three manual high schools. Manual 
 work was taught in ten schools. In the state of 
 Washington four cities taught manual training in the
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 181 
 
 grades and seven had manual high schools; in Wyo- 
 ming there were four manual high schools and three 
 graded schools giving the manual work; and in Mary- 
 land it was introduced into thirty-five high schools 
 and three graded schools. South Dakota has three 
 manual training high schools, and Minnesota gave 
 manual training work in ninety-eight schools — 
 many of which were separate manual training high 
 schools. Vermont taught manual training in the 
 grades in seven towns and Tennessee in five towns. In 
 Ohio the State Superintendent of Schools says that 
 manual training is taught in all the towns and 
 cities and that there are many manual high schools. 
 Arkansas had three manual high schools; Florida, 
 five; Kentucky, one; Nebraska, three; New York, 
 five; Missouri, three; Michigan, ten; and Georgia, 
 twenty-two, and it is taught more or less in the 
 grades of all these states, as well as in Wisconsin 
 and South Carolina. For a new movement in educa- 
 tion — one which increases interest in school for 
 pupils at the age when their absence from school 
 makes for economic and social waste — this tend- 
 ency is too strong in America to be overlooked by any 
 student of our government. For the introduction 
 of manual training work in schools means two im- 
 portant things to the boys — work that they like and
 
 182 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 teachers that they like. Boys need men when the 
 boys are in their teens, and the prevalence of women 
 teachers in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades and 
 in the high school has driven more boys from school, 
 and made bad citizens to make bad government, than 
 we realize. Of course these manual teachers cost 
 money, they make schools more expensive; but ac- 
 cording to the report of the United States Commis- 
 sioner of Education the increased cost of maintenance 
 in the seventh and eighth grades has been met by an 
 increase in attendance. All of the desks are full to-day 
 and millions of boys are out of school who should be in 
 school and who would be in school if the schools gave 
 these boys desk room and rough work with their 
 hands. But those things cost money. It seems to 
 be largely a question of how good a citizenship we 
 are willing to pay for. As it stands, our thrift is 
 overreaching itself. We are cheating ourselves. 
 
 And here we come to the problem of the boy and 
 his teacher. The boy goes to the pool hall and the 
 saloon primarily because there he finds men. At 
 school he is surfeited with femininity. Given men 
 teachers for the boy after he gets into his teens, 
 and the boy will not be so ready to leave school as 
 he is. But teaching is a profession that men use as 
 a stepping-stone to something better. It is not a
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 183 
 
 man's profession, and wages of teachers are so low 
 that men cannot afford to make teaching a career. 
 If the statistics of the census bureau are correct, no 
 extravagance of our people is so disastrous to us as 
 the economy we are practicing in our schools in the 
 seventh and eighth grades. For there the boys fall 
 out by the millions. And the fact that their sisters, 
 who can earn as much at that age as their brothers 
 earn, remain on an average a few years longer, in- 
 dicates that the boys leave school because they are 
 boys, and because the schools are designed for the 
 girls. In some hazy, indefinite way we seem to be 
 realizing this as a people; for in ten states — Mas- 
 sachusetts, Utah, Indiana, Virginia, New Jersey, 
 Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, California, and Michigan — 
 we have passed laws of more or less value providing 
 for pensioning school-teachers. Given a pension, 
 and a man can afford to make teaching a profession, 
 and the man teacher will appear in the seventh and 
 eighth grades, and the boy will be saved to good citi- 
 zenship. If the laws permitting school districts to set 
 aside pension funds spread over the states as the 
 laws authorizing manual training schools have spread 
 since 1900, by 1920 the million pupils who reach the 
 high school every year will be greatly increased if 
 there is any grounds for prophecy in statistics. For
 
 184 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 teachers' pensions are now being agitated, according 
 to letters from state school superintendents in Wash- 
 ington, Connecticut, South Dakota, Vermont, Florida, 
 Kentucky, Wisconsin, and New York — where a bet- 
 ter law is demanded. And the feeling of the people 
 that more liberal school expenditures will bring a 
 broadened interest in the state and in more rigid 
 popular control of the state affairs by the people is 
 met by instinctive opposition from the politicians. 
 For in New York discussing the proposed teachers' 
 pension law a machine politician in the state senate 
 declared within a year in a public interview that he 
 would introduce an amendment to the constitution 
 prohibiting the state or any of its subdivisions from 
 creating a pension service for any public employes 
 except policemen and firemen. Here we have a 
 squarely drawn battle between democracy and the 
 aristocracy of politics for the retention of special 
 privileges or the extension of democracy. 
 
 But this crime of the waste years between twelve 
 and eighteen when American children leave school 
 is more than a social crime against the ballot box — 
 it is economic. In the Annals of the American Acad- 
 emy of Political and Social Science for January, 
 1909 (p. 54), we find an investigator writing: "The 
 efficiency of the German workman, due to continua-
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 185 
 
 tion schools, has increased to such an extent that 
 German investigators feel warranted in considering 
 American competition negligible. These same Ger- 
 man investigators declare that the efficiency of the 
 American workman has decreased in the last ten 
 years. Our own American consul general to Berlin, 
 considering the reports of these German investigators, 
 writes in a formal report to this government: " Re- 
 duced to its simplest terms these investigators gen- 
 erally conclude that reliance on a general more or less 
 superficial education, together with natural adapta- 
 bility to fit young men for every walk of life and the 
 lack of specialized study in physical science, modern 
 language, and the industrial arts, will, if persisted in, 
 neutralize much of the advantage which our country 
 now enjoys." 
 
 The answer of the New York reactionary state 
 senator speaking for capital would probably be to 
 increase the tariff. But the answer of democracy 
 would be to pension the school-teacher, and by get- 
 ting higher grade teachers, keep our boys in school, 
 learning to use their hands and their minds, that 
 they may be good citizens and row their weight in 
 the economic boat of the world's industry. If there 
 is anything in education as the mainspring of civic 
 virtue, the educational problem of democracy is: to
 
 186 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 stop the waste of the first years of adolescence in 
 America, that the trained conscience of the people in 
 maturity may find its way into the ballot box. For 
 while it is true that learning and wisdom in individual 
 cases do not always go together, still the fact seems 
 to be fairly well established that in the particular 
 blend of the various strains of Aryan blood now in- 
 habiting the American continent, education of the 
 mass does direct the conscience of the people toward 
 wisdom, and does turn their hearts to that common 
 sense of conduct known as righteousness. 
 
 Take, for instance, Massachusetts. The Report 
 of the National Commissioner of Education for 1907 
 warrants some most interesting conclusion about 
 education and political progress. The Report indi- 
 cates by Table 7 that the daily attendance in Massa- 
 chusetts is larger than in any other state, and (Table 
 8) that the average number of days' attendance a 
 year is larger than in any other state, and hence 
 that (Table 20) the 33.2 cents per hundred dollars 
 of true valuation of all real and personal property 
 expended for school purposes annually brings the 
 greatest efficiency in educational result. The Report 
 indicates that Massachusetts sends more of her 
 children more days in the year to higher grade schools 
 than any other American state. Is it therefore fair
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 187 
 
 to ask what does the state get out of it? How does 
 the school serve a progressive, sane democracy? A 
 monograph of the American Academy of Social and 
 Political Science is devoted to Massachusetts labor 
 legislation, and finds it on the whole the wisest labor 
 legislation in the United States. In railroad legisla- 
 tion Massachusetts has adopted as a matter of 
 course provisions for state ownership of railroads as 
 a penalty for oppression, and while her commission 
 has no rate-making power, it has information upon 
 which to base rate suggestions, and that informa- 
 tion collected under the law is so complete and so 
 categorical in its nature that a rate suggestion from 
 a Massachusetts commission, backed by the power 
 of railroad ownership, has all the teeth necessary 
 to keep rate encroachments at a respectful distance. 
 The commonwealth has led all the other states in 
 providing a good substitute for old-age pensions for 
 its citizens. It regulates its public utilities with 
 rigorous justice, and its banking laws are models 
 for other states. Moreover, without primaries and 
 without legal aids to secure representative govern- 
 ment, other than the most radically nonpartisan 
 ballot law in the United States, Massachusetts has 
 maintained in the United States Senate representa- 
 tive men who by sheer intellectual force have domi-
 
 188 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 nated that body with the Massachusetts idea and 
 have made — whether for good or ill — the Massa- 
 chusetts idea a power in this nation far beyond the 
 warrant of either the wealth, the population, or the 
 geographical area of the commonwealth. And finally 
 with all her progress — and one who examines the 
 laws and the enforcement of laws of the several 
 states, and examines them carefully, must admit 
 that upon the whole Massachusetts is our most 
 progressive commonwealth — with all her progress 
 the federal courts only were invoked once during the 
 two years from 1907 to 1909 to set aside the enforce- 
 ment of any Massachusetts law. 
 
 And that brings us into the midst of the whole 
 matter of this American democracy. Massachusetts 
 seems to show us that the basis of real progress is 
 in the schoolhouse, and the experience of other 
 states with a less efficient school system proves 
 beyond a doubt that the limits of progress are found 
 in the restrictions put upon progress by the courts 
 — for the most part restrictions of the federal courts. 
 
 The status of the courts will be considered in an- 
 other chapter. But it is obvious that they mark 
 the bound beyond which democracy at any given 
 time may not trespass. The bounds marked by the 
 courts are changing. They are not the same yester-
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 189 
 
 day, to-day, and forever. And even though the 
 constitution is not formally amended, its interpre- 
 tation changes as the people grow intellectually. 
 The fundamental law of yesterday is not the fun- 
 damental law of to-day, nor is the fundamental law 
 of the land to-day to be the fundamental law to- 
 morrow. The constitution is amended by inter- 
 pretation more than by formal amendment, and the 
 amendments by interpretation are made by the 
 courts as a result of a most inexorable law of human 
 nature. Men take the color of their times. And 
 courts are men. So when the times change, when 
 the sentiment of the people becomes fixed, courts 
 bend the constitution to the people. 
 
 Therefore conditions in Massachusetts prove that 
 the first obligation upon those who would change 
 the trend of our American democracy from the 
 worship of property rights to a consideration of the 
 proper relation of property rights to the rights of 
 men should not be to change laws and reform the 
 courts; the first obligation of reformers should be 
 to go to the bottom and make men and women who 
 can think and feel and act justly and unselfishly. 
 The mainspring of democracy is in the schools. 
 The high schools, the colleges, and the universities 
 train between one third and two fifths of our people.
 
 190 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 But the masses are from the grades at or under the 
 sixth grade. Fortunately this sixth-grade mass of 
 our population changes with the generations, and 
 the educated man or woman is found in almost every 
 family. There are no family lines of intellectual 
 cleavage. And the leadership of the best trained 
 minds and hearts is rarely if ever lost to either side 
 in any political contest, although always intelli- 
 gent leadership is more or less hampered. And often 
 the compromises which wisdom must make with 
 honest ignorance play into the hands of those whom 
 both are opposing. The demagogue and his fol- 
 lowers are after all the chief agents of reaction. Yet 
 the demagogue in the fool's school of experience is 
 merely teaching the masses at a terrible cost what 
 they should have learned during the waste years 
 between the time when they left school in their early 
 teens and the time when they began to live in their 
 own right economically, socially, and politically in 
 their twenties. 
 
 Moreover, if by any turn of the treacherous kalei- 
 doscope of politics some issue should put the interests 
 of a majority of the uninformed, unschooled, un- 
 trained, well-meaning three fifths of our population 
 upon one side of a question of vital importance and 
 their better trained fellows upon the other side,
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 191 
 
 the price paid to the master of the fool's school 
 might be the disruption of the Republic. It is in- 
 conceivable how such a thing could occur. For 
 through books and newspapers and the scores of 
 other educational agencies of the land the common 
 education of the people is advancing, even after they 
 leave the schoolhouse. Indeed, in farming and 
 storekeeping and in many of the outdoor trades 
 which require alert minds to pass quick, sure judg- 
 ments upon a score of matters daily, there is no 
 arrested mental development. The mind of men 
 and women in these vocations grows through ado- 
 lescence until maturity, and the newspaper and the 
 public library finish the work of the schools for mil- 
 lions of people. But there remain other millions, 
 bound to machines, working automatically, for long 
 hours and of necessity at small wages (because the 
 grade of intelligence required for the work is low), 
 and these millions taken from school at the end of 
 infancy, should they ever unite in politics, would 
 visit upon this nation a terrible vengeance for its 
 criminal neglect of their cause. They are skeletons 
 in our national closet. Our inhumanity to them is 
 our national sin; for which we must suffer if we do 
 not change our ways. 
 
 "It is practically impossible to find a community
 
 192 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 in the United States," says Nathan C. Schaeffer, 
 state superintendent of Pennsylvania, writing in the 
 discussion of taxation as related to public educa- 
 tion, published by the National Educational Asso- 
 ciation, "that does not spend more money for whisky 
 and tobacco than for education." The Report of 
 the United States Commissioner of Education, 1907, 
 indicates (p. 525) that there are only twice as many 
 school-teachers as there are bartenders in the coun- 
 try. So while the aggregate amount spent for 
 schools is large, the comparative amount is small. 
 A few states, notably Ohio, make provision for the 
 reimbursement of parents for the time of children in 
 school. And eventually all the states must come 
 to that plan. For the pittance that the child can 
 earn is so little compared with the need of the state 
 for that child's judgment formed by a trained mind 
 in making public sentiment when he is grown, that 
 it is folly to haggle over the expense account. 
 
 If democracy is to go forward, it must begin to 
 move in the schools of the country. Now as a people 
 we can move quickly when we desire to move quickly. 
 Within ten years there has been a complete change 
 in the American mind about the treatment of defect- 
 ive children. We have stopped putting children 
 in jail; the juvenile court has come into the judicial
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 193 
 
 system of practically every American state. We do 
 not count its cost, because we see its justice. The 
 enlightened selfishness of the American people makes 
 them regard investments in playgrounds, children's 
 camps, recreation places on docks and piers, boys' 
 farms and similar institutions for children, as profit- 
 able investments. And the enlightened selfishness 
 of the people — their public altruism — must be 
 awakened to the fact that the waste years of early 
 adolescence of our American children constitute the 
 greatest menace to the perpetuity of our institu- 
 tions. The waste of those years is undemocratic. It 
 is due to public selfishness. If the child leaves 
 school for social reasons, that is because he does not 
 feel that the school interests him, it is demonstra- 
 ble that better schools — higher priced teachers, 
 teaching the rough, practical things which early 
 adolescence instinctively longs for — will hold him. 
 But that requires men teachers, and to hold men of 
 the right sort teaching must be made a career; and 
 for that pensions for teachers seem to be necessary 
 unless salaries are greatly increased. (Parenthetic- 
 ally it might be said that there is no reason why 
 citizens as adults should not pay the taxes required 
 to pension the teacher who worked too cheaply to 
 teach them as children.) If, on the other hand, the
 
 194 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 child is compelled to leave school because his parents 
 cannot afford to keep him in school, — for economic 
 reasons, in short, — then the public, having need of 
 the child's adult judgment in the state, should re- 
 imburse the parents for their loss of the child's miser- 
 able wages, and so keep the child in school. 
 
 Laws will not make us a free people; presidents 
 and governors will not make us free; courts will not 
 make us free. "Ye shall know the truth, and the 
 truth shall make you free." And if the " general 
 genius of a government" — which Hamilton says is 
 "all that can be substantially relied upon for per- 
 manent effects" — does not give the people the 
 truth, the people must remain in bondage. The upper 
 grades of our common schools and our high schools 
 and our colleges and universities are turning out 
 millions of men and women who are giving their lives 
 to society unselfishly as teachers and preachers and 
 farmers and doctors and lawyers and mechanics and 
 merchants, whose chief thought is not for money. 
 These men and women form the bulk of the well- 
 housed, well-clad, well-fed, prosperous body of the 
 democracy, neither rich nor poor. But occasionally 
 there rises in a town, a state, or a nation some igno- 
 rant, selfish, crafty, brutal human vulture, fat with 
 prey of capital taken within the law, and greedy for
 
 SCHOOLS THE MAINSPRING OF DEMOCRACY 195 
 
 more. He debauches legislatures; he blinds the 
 courts, and controls executives. The public senti- 
 ment of educated people does not check him, as it 
 sometimes checks the greedy man from the college. 
 He is crass, vicious, and unrestrained. Yet he is 
 our own child. He and the criminal of the slums 
 are brothers. Society has made both slums — the 
 ignorant slum of the rich man and the ignorant 
 slum of the poor man. For it has denied them both 
 the truth that would make them free. And we 
 must all suffer for our sin to them. For all our new 
 machinery of democracy, our secret ballot, our party 
 system, slowly purifying itself, our primary nomi- 
 nations, our direct legislation, will avail us little 
 against these two men of the slums. Together one 
 in industry, and the other in crime, sometimes allied, 
 and never far apart, these men, like jungle beasts, 
 live upon the flesh and blood of the children. Into 
 their lairs, either as plunder of wages or prey of crime, 
 go the waste years of adolescence in this country. 
 Yet they — these social outlaws — are but the in- 
 carnation of our national greed. They speak for 
 democracy, too; they are a part of democracy; 
 they are products of democracy. This is their gov- 
 ernment as well as the government of the middle 
 classes. They and all the evils in their train —
 
 196 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 crime, poverty, injustice, suffering — are signs of 
 our bondage to ignorance and greed. It is a bond- 
 age self-imposed. For at our own hands, unchecked 
 by courts or by federal laws or by state statutes, 
 lies the school system of the people.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 In these closing years of the first decade of the 
 twentieth century, there are in the United States 
 ninety millions of us — mostly Aryans. Some of us 
 are Latin Aryans from the south of Europe; a few 
 of us are Slavic Aryans from the north of Europe; a 
 distinguishable strain of our blood is Norseman 
 Aryan, from the west of Europe, and many of us are 
 Celtic Aryans, cropping out of any of half a dozen 
 other Aryan breeds; but the dominant blood is the 
 Teutonic blood of the Angles and the Jute and the 
 Saxons, — the blood that absorbed the Latins, and 
 the Celts, and the Normans, who came to the British 
 Isle as conquerors in battle, and lost in the struggle 
 of the blood. For here in the United States we have 
 two things which have made the Teuton strong in 
 this earth: the home with the mother never out of 
 caste, and the rule of the folk by the "most ancient 
 ways" — the supremacy of the majority. Other 
 branches of the Aryan race have come into this 
 continent, have established half-caste homes with 
 
 197
 
 198 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 native wives, and the outlawed woman has dragged 
 these races down to her level. Other Aryans have 
 come to the land under the rule of a king or a priest 
 and tyranny has inbred and destroyed them. But 
 the Teutonic Aryan brought his home, kept his 
 Teutonic women full caste; the blood has never de- 
 generated, and tyranny has never undermined our 
 institutions. So here we are, ninety millions of us, 
 if not all of one blood, at least all of one mind. The 
 free woman in the home has made the free school; 
 the free school has preserved the free man; and the 
 free man, still abiding by the most ancient ways — 
 the rule of the majority — is working out free in- 
 stitutions. 
 
 Now this freedom of ours is of its own kind. There 
 is said to be in the harbor of Havana a most re- 
 markable statue of liberty. A woman stands, with 
 ecstasy in her face, with a shout of joy all but on 
 her lips, with almost delirious eyes turned upward 
 toward her wide-stretched arms, whereon the broken 
 manacles are dangling useless. That is the Latin 
 idea of liberty. But our freedom is another thing. 
 It is not so new-born. If it might be symbolized by 
 a woman, the figure could be represented as a mother 
 who never felt a shackle, toiling wearily j^et happily for 
 her family. For this freedom of ours is little more
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 199 
 
 than the right of a human being to be useful; and to be 
 useful one must sacrifice, must give, must deny, and 
 be happy only in the joy of others. Our freedom, 
 that comes from a free mother in a free home, par- 
 takes of her self-abnegation. And so we alone of the 
 Aryans that have no bondwoman's blood in our 
 veins, we who have no half-caste mothers, have been 
 able to rear the children of democracy, men to whom 
 freedom means sacrifice. And as the Aryans of 
 Greece tried democracy with their bondwomen and 
 failed, and the Aryan of Rome tried a Republic with 
 slaves and failed, so they who came to America from 
 Latin countries failed in this new world because 
 their new world homes were half-caste and not free, 
 and the liberty they sought was license and not 
 sacrifice. And by this token we must know that so 
 long as our democracy is altruistic, so long as it is 
 based on self-sacrifice and self-restraint, it will en- 
 dure. Now we have in our government two great 
 institutions enforcing both self-sacrifice and self- 
 restraint: our schools, for which we spend nearly 
 half a billion dollars in taxes every year without 
 getting any immediate material results for our self- 
 sacrifice, and our courts, which hold us back from 
 our political impulses. And though we claim to 
 base our government upon our federal Constitution,
 
 200 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 neither our schools nor our courts, the mainsprings 
 and the checks of democracy, derive their real powers 
 definitely expressed or get the charter for those 
 powers from the Constitution. The schools are 
 purely local in their origin and management; and 
 the veto power of the courts over our legislation is 
 purely an extra-constitutional power interpreted into 
 the Constitution by Chief Justice John Marshall. 
 Literally we are living under a government, the be- 
 ginning and the end of which — the schools and the 
 courts — are the creation of folklaws! The funda- 
 mental law of the nation hedges the legislative 
 branch of the government about with all sorts of 
 theoretical checks; it sets metes and bounds for 
 the executive; and it marks a Pickwickian dead line 
 across which the courts may not step. But as the 
 years have gone by all these checks on the various 
 branches of the government have been broken. 
 
 The Constitution declares that the lawmakers 
 shall make laws and that the executives shall ap- 
 point men to enforce the laws. But in spite of the 
 adoration of the Constitution by certain mechanical 
 lawyers, the will of the people has changed the 
 Constitution without bothering to go through the 
 empty form of writing in the amendments. Now 
 lawmakers appoint many executive subordinates
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 201 
 
 through a system of political "recommendations." 
 These subordinates appointed through political rec- 
 ommendation by legislators assist in the enforcement 
 of laws, and these subordinates often are loyal to 
 the lawmakers who secured their appointments 
 rather than to the executives who merely sign the 
 notices of appointment. Also in the face of the 
 Constitution in this country executives make laws. 
 A rather elaborate executive legislative function has 
 developed among us. First, by withholding "patron- 
 age," that is, the right of political recommendations 
 from lawmakers, executives may (and certainly do) 
 coerce lawmakers into voting for favorite executive 
 bills in the Congress. Secondly, by voicing public 
 sentiment, and arousing the people, the executive 
 coerces lawmakers to vote for his measures. The 
 Roosevelt policies that were enacted into laws were 
 enacted in the face of a sheer majority in Congress 
 against them. And finally, a third check of the 
 Constitution is broken by the federal courts. For 
 instance, certain district attorneys, marshals, clerks, 
 and judges, forced upon President Roosevelt by a 
 reactionary Senate, sometimes gayly set to work to 
 annul many of the laws which he had secured. So 
 instead of having three distinct branches of govern- 
 ment, the legislative, executive, and judicial, we have
 
 202 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 lawmakers controlling the execution of laws, execu- 
 tives influencing the making of laws, and courts 
 vetoing laws, and enforcing the laws through bench 
 warrants, injunctions, and court orders of various 
 kinds. And as if that were not enough, by way of 
 diversion, we have lawmakers naming the courts 
 and executives rallying the people to protest against 
 court decisions. If there is any distinct branch of 
 the American government that is not easily amena- 
 ble to political influence from the other two branches, 
 it is difficult to say just which branch it is. Thus 
 has our flexible Constitution been bent to the needs 
 of popular government and the exigencies of politics. 
 Yet with all this flux of government as a nation we 
 live in admirable self-restraint. Probably Americans 
 are the most conservative people in the civilized 
 world. 
 
 But while the Constitution has been losing its 
 rigidity, the federal courts have assumed an extra- 
 constitutional right to veto state and national legis- 
 lation, and to set aside the decrees of state courts; 
 and now the federal courts are beginning to restrain 
 state executives in the enforcement of state laws. 
 The political sovereignty of the people of the United 
 States probably is more largely in the hands of the 
 American federal courts just now than in any other
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 203 
 
 single branch of the government. Self-restraint is, 
 therefore, the dominant note in our government. 
 For by permitting this extra-constitutional power of 
 the courts over us we are obviously self-restrained. 
 We have liberty without license. That this extra- 
 constitutionally self-imposed restraint of the people 
 through their courts upon their own political im- 
 pulses was abused, that it made the courts the organs 
 of a political and financial aristocracy in the days 
 when prosperity was a high potency god, and that 
 there is still some danger of a return of the aristoc- 
 racy to power, there can be no doubt. The forces 
 of altruism are manifest in the rising democratic 
 institutions in the cities and the states. The oppos- 
 ing forces of greed are manifest in the judicial wor- 
 ship of property rights as against human rights in 
 many courts. This worship of sheer property rights 
 as such is still found lingering in the legal doctrine 
 of the " assumed risk" in labor damage cases, and 
 in the judicial theory that a legislative act is not 
 "due process of law." But on the other hand the 
 opposing forces of altruism and greed in our govern- 
 ment are by no means at rest. Probably they will 
 never be at rest so long as we are a growing nation. 
 For where there is rest there is death. The conflict, 
 however fierce, is a sign of our national youth. This
 
 204 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 conflict between our democracy and property rights 
 is carried on in the courts — and not by barricades 
 in the streets. And it is carried on in the courts 
 through an extra-legal power of veto upon the legis- 
 latures and by injunctions upon administrators of the 
 law. Surely this surrender of the people to the 
 courts represents some large subconscious conviction 
 of the great worth of patient self-restraint even in 
 the face of temporary wrong. We are living peace- 
 fully under an extra-constitutional government of 
 lawyers rather than of laws; for lawyers in the courts 
 say the final word about the meaning of our laws: 
 we have no earthly tribunal in our government in 
 which during times of peace a man not a lawyer has, 
 under the Constitution as now construed, more than 
 an advisory function. And slowly as the fear of 
 God — which is the beginning of wisdom — gets 
 into the lawyers, the nation is coming through self- 
 restraint to the attainment of whatever righteous 
 aspirations may be in the hearts of the people. 
 
 Therefore, since we are living under a government 
 of the courts, in which the sovereign will of the people 
 is finally expressed by the courts and in spite of laws 
 on the statutes and in spite of administrative theories 
 of duty, it may be well to examine the courts of this 
 nation. Who are the judges that make and all
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 205 
 
 but execute our laws? In the appendix, page 255, 
 will be found a list of all the judges appointed during 
 the eight years from 1901 to 1909 to our federal 
 bench, and the formal indorsements they had in 
 securing appointment. It will be seen by this list 
 that these judges for the most part are indorsed by 
 business men and politicians, or by other judges 
 who owed their places to the indorsement of business 
 men and politicians. The federal bench of to-day 
 had its birth in politics. In so far as they came 
 from politics, the federal judges knew that politics 
 is largely financed by business. The high-caste 
 Brahmans of politics who form the "organization" in 
 every state, and who extract from business the oil 
 that lubricates politics, all were "for" these judges 
 high and low. There is scarcely a man in the list 
 who set out to his goal fighting the political machine, 
 defying the "organization," and scorning the alliance 
 that made our business and our politics reprehen- 
 sible during the nineties and the early years of this 
 century. So one may see why the federal bench has 
 its face set against all reform and is inclined to sniff 
 at reformers. 
 
 This list proves one thing certainly. That the 
 courts — having final jurisdiction and authority over
 
 206 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 things temporal in America — come from the people. 
 Change the character of our democracy, — that is, 
 change the method by which we express our political 
 faith, — and we will change the character of United 
 States senators; thus will we change our courts. 
 The men who named these courts were interested in 
 business prosperity. That was our national god 
 during the closing years of the nineteenth century. 
 Prosperity won a great national election. Prosperity 
 was the dominant idea of the people. A majority 
 of the senators elected from 1890 to 1908 were chosen 
 by railroad attorneys through the state bosses who 
 influenced the state legislatures. Hence property is 
 the dominant thought of our courts. The assumed 
 risk for accidents is on the men who work for rail- 
 roads in a hazardous undertaking, not upon the 
 capital that employs them in a hazardous under- 
 taking. The assumed risk of failure in farming or 
 in storekeeping along any line of railroad is upon 
 the men who undertake the farming and storekeep- 
 ing without any guarantee that railroad rates shall 
 move their crops and the merchandise; the risk is 
 not on the men who build the railroads — even in 
 foolish or malicious competition or to reap extrava- 
 gant promoters' profits. That was the idea of the 
 people when business and politics were allies. The
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 207 
 
 courts named by the senators who were named by 
 the big property interests expressed the will of the 
 people, and because prosperity was the god of the 
 people, the defense of invested capital as merely in- 
 vested capital, unrelated to human considerations, 
 dominated the ruling of the courts that came from 
 the people in that day. Money in politics protected 
 money in business. But when the people change 
 their United States senators, the courts will change, 
 and the courts will amend the Constitution to suit 
 the people. For a sentiment strong enough to domi- 
 nate legislatures and congresses, and demand a 
 constitutional amendment, does not need the amend- 
 ment. Even if the machinery of our government did 
 not put the courts indirectly into the hands of the 
 people, they would still take the coloring of the pre- 
 vailing sentiment about them, after it ceased to be 
 a clamor and became settled conviction. And our 
 courts — with all their extra-constitutional power, 
 with all their recent bias toward the rights of property 
 "in its public use" as against human rights — are 
 still our own courts, our own political creatures, and 
 subject entirely to our control. The apparent 
 sovereignty of the courts is really sovereignty of the 
 people. Indeed, as matters stand to-day with the 
 national Senate and the national House organized as
 
 208 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 they are, the United States Supreme Court seems to 
 be the most progressive institution under our federal 
 government. 
 
 There is an anomalous extra-legal organization 
 in this country known as the Association of Attor- 
 neys-general. Something like half of the American 
 states are represented at the annual meetings of the 
 Association, either by their attorneys-general or by 
 their assistants. These men are elected for short 
 terms — usually for two years — and they come to 
 these meetings directly from the people. Probably 
 these attorneys-general more clearly than any other 
 body of men in the United States interpret the as- 
 pirations of the American people as these aspirations 
 are being formed into statutes directed against the 
 arrogant dominion of the thing called property "in 
 its public use ' ' in this government. It is not strange, 
 therefore, that we find these attorneys-general chaf- 
 ing under the veto of the federal courts upon 
 state legislation, passed to neutralize the political 
 and social power of property or capital or whatever 
 form wealth takes in the social order as opposed to 
 the rights of men. These attorneys-general are the 
 counsel for the centrifugal force of society as against 
 the centripetal; the advocates of the common altru- 
 ism of all men, against the common greed of all men.
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 209 
 
 They are special pleaders for democracy; but like 
 all counsel, their pleadings must still remain plead- 
 ings and not judgments. Yet the fact as announced 
 at a recent meeting of the organization that one hun- 
 dred and eight injunctions were pending in federal 
 courts against the enforcement of state laws, in 1908, 
 indicates that the need of counsel for the democracy 
 is evident. Probably the number is understated. 
 A recent inquiry made to the attorneys-general of 
 twenty-one states taken at random, as to the num- 
 ber of laws suspended by suits in the federal courts 
 during the two years from 1907 to 1909, brings the 
 following illuminating answers: South Carolina, 5, 
 lost all; Florida, 5; South Dakota, 5, 1 lost, 1 won; 
 Maine, 1 pending; Minnesota, 1 lost; Utah, 2, 
 1 lost, 1 won; Indiana, 7; Georgia, 10; Massachu- 
 setts, 1; Nebraska, 1 won, 2 pending; Alabama, 13, 
 won about half; Colorada, 2 pending; Vermont 1; 
 Montana, 1; Oregon, 5, 2 pending, won 3; Michigan, 
 5, won all; Washington, 3, won 2; Ohio, 6, won 5; 
 California, Virginia, and Oklahoma each 1. 
 
 Now, each of these laws attacked represents from 
 one to ten suits, and it is interesting to note that these 
 suits in a majority of cases attacked railroad laws, 
 in many cases tax laws ; in some cases food laws — 
 usually stock food or pure paint laws, and occasionally
 
 210 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 liquor laws. Reading fully the answers above quoted, 
 one is constrained to believe that the right of the 
 state to tax property, and to destroy it by prohibition 
 under the police power of the state if necessary, is 
 conceded by the courts, but that the right to make 
 railroad rates for the common good under the police 
 power of the state is contested. 
 
 The Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Consti- 
 tution generally regards legislative acts of taxation 
 and prohibition as "due process of law" — accord- 
 ing to our federal courts; but the Fourteenth 
 Amendment considers railroad rate-making legisla- 
 tion, whether by the state or by the federal govern- 
 ment, as "due process of law" only until a federal 
 court can think the matter over! A rather attract- 
 ive, if not graceful, curve might be made by a person 
 of a mathematical turn, indicating the variableness 
 of our United States Supreme Court, upon this sub- 
 ject of "due process of law" during the thirty years 
 past. Thirty-three years ago the United States 
 Supreme Court decided the case of Munn vs. Illi- 
 nois, held — 
 
 "When one devotes his property to a use in which 
 the public has an interest, he, in effect, grants to 
 the public an interest in that use and must submit to 
 be controlled by the public, for the common good, 
 to the extent of the interest he has created."
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 211 
 
 Elsewhere in the same opinion, the court says: — 
 
 "If it be admitted that the legislature has any 
 control over the compensation, the extent of the 
 compensation becomes a mere matter of legislative 
 discretion. The controlling fact is the power to 
 regulate at all." 
 
 Clearly that decision puts the state regulation of 
 rates along with the state's power to confiscate, as 
 it confiscates in the case of prohibition, race-track 
 gambling, impure food, and the like. The regulation 
 of rates by the state is made a police power, perhaps 
 on the theory that the right of the community to 
 rates that would haul the crop to market was as im- 
 portant as the rights of the bondholders of foolishly 
 competing railroads to interest on their ill-advised 
 investments. The sacred rights of "property de- 
 voted to public use " — invested in railroad bonds — 
 often meanly invested in railroads built for business 
 spite or commercial greed — was held in those days 
 to be no more sacred than the rights of property in 
 farms. 
 
 Again, in 1876, the Supreme Court declared in the 
 case of C. B. & R. R. vs. Iowa: — 
 
 "When the legislature steps in and prescribes a 
 maximum charge, it operates upon this corporation 
 the same as it does upon individuals engaged in a 
 similar business."
 
 212 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 Clearly the court recognized legislative rate-making 
 as "due process of law" performed under the police 
 power of the state. The court repeated this opinion. 
 For in the case of Peik vs. C. & N. W. R. R., the 
 Supreme Court held — 
 
 "When a property has been clothed with a public 
 interest the legislature may fix a limit to that which 
 in law shall be reasonable for its use. The limit binds 
 the court as well as the people." 
 
 Much is said about the stability of government un- 
 der courts, yet the statutes have not changed, the 
 Constitution has not changed, but the United States 
 Supreme Court has changed, and now that which 
 once was law is not the law. For the court grad- 
 ually edged away from that doctrine of thirty years 
 ago, and made the law as it is to-day independently 
 of legislation or of any amendment to the Constitu- 
 tion. And in 1885 we find the Court crawfishing a 
 little from its decisions of the seventies. In the 
 case of Stone vs. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, 
 the Court holds: — 
 
 "From what has been said it is not to be inferred 
 that this power of limitation or regulation is without 
 limit. The power to regulate is not the power to 
 destroy, and limitation is not the equivalent of con- 
 fiscation."
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 213 
 
 There we find the police power of the state slipping 
 gently out of rate controversies. A few years later, 
 in the case of C. M. & S. P. R. R. vs. Minnesota, the 
 United States Supreme Court found that the ques- 
 tion of the " reasonableness of the rate" established 
 by the state was " eminently a question for judicial 
 investigation requiring due process of law for its deter- 
 mination." There the police power of the state 
 kissed good-by to railroad legislation. 
 
 After that decision the police power of the state 
 began consorting with brewers and race-track gam- 
 blers and makers of bad food, and other persons of 
 inferior social caste. "The controlling fact is," 
 not as the court said in 1876, " the power to regulate 
 at all." There has been a change in our law, with no 
 change in anything except in the personnel of the 
 court. "The controlling fact" is the "reasonable- 
 ness of the rate." But the court felt it was renigging, 
 and in another opinion saved its face in 1892 — Budd 
 vs. New York — by saying in its cuff aside and 
 obiter dicta: — 
 
 " What we said in the opinion in United States 134 
 (above quoted) as to the question of the reasonable- 
 ness of the rates of charge being one for judicial inves- 
 tigation, had no reference to a case where the rates 
 are prescribed directly by the legislature."
 
 214 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 The statute failed; it denied the right of court 
 review! A little later, in the case of C. & G. T. R. R. 
 vs. Wellman, the case turned on the power of the legis- 
 lature to regulate rates at all. In upholding the 
 Michigan statute, the United States Supreme Court 
 held that: — 
 
 "The legislature has the power to fix rates and the 
 extent of judicial interference is protection against 
 unreasonable rates." 
 
 In the case of Reagan vs. Farmers' Loan and 
 Trust Company, 154 U.S. 362, the Supreme Court 
 enjoined the enforcement of a Texas law until the 
 reasonableness of the rates fixed was determined by 
 evidence. That is a long jump from the Munn case, 
 wherein rates were fixed under the police power 
 of the state, and from the Peik case, wherein the same 
 court held, nearly twenty years before, that if the 
 rate has been improperly fixed, "the legislature and 
 not the courts must be appealed to for justice." 
 And mind you, all this edging along from "police 
 power" to "due process of law" was made, not by 
 unanimous decisions of the Court, but by four to five, 
 three to six, and by two to seven dissents, except in a 
 few cases — one being that case just cited. The law 
 changed, not because it was clearly right to depart 
 from the former ruling, but because of the changing
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 215 
 
 temperament of the people as manifested in their 
 judges. The people in those years were clamoring 
 madly for more railroads. The people were eager 
 to concede anything to capital. The railroads were 
 getting control of state politics, naming United States 
 senators, who in turn named federal judges; and the 
 Constitution was amended by the people, without 
 bothering to go through the form of passing the 
 amendments in the legally prescribed manner. No 
 special credit is due to the writer hereof for origi- 
 nality in these researches above noted. They are 
 printed in a book entitled " Railway Problems," com- 
 piled by William Z. Ripley, of Harvard, surely a most 
 respectable source. 
 
 About the time the federal court began rate-making 
 we find the United States Supreme Court wrestling 
 with the question : What is a reasonable rate — 
 what profit should a rate yield ? Rate-making had 
 passed entirely from the legislatures to the federal 
 courts. In 1898 the Supreme Court had gone far 
 enough to decide that "the company is entitled to 
 ask" "a fair return upon that which it employs for 
 the public convenience," which, under the evidence 
 upon which the court decided, was something like 
 1.99 per cent, 4.06 per cent, 6.84 per cent, and 10.63 
 per cent — according to the value of the railroads
 
 216 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 involved. But in the case of Cutting vs. Goddard 
 in 1901 — a stockyards case — it seems that times 
 were better than in 1898, and the court decided in 
 effect that 10 per cent was not too much, and that 
 rates which reduce the earnings to 5.3 per cent are un- 
 constitutional. These decisions also are cited in the 
 above-named book. 
 
 But the curve has turned. In January, 1909, the 
 Supreme Court of the United States held in the New 
 York Gas case that 6 per cent is about fair. In 
 other words all under 6 per cent must be subjected to 
 regulation, only upon "due process of law." All 
 over that sum may be regulated by the police power 
 of the state for the common good. That is the law 
 to-day. If the people change, the laws may be some- 
 thing entirely different to-morrow. 
 
 But let us examine a little further and see again 
 how our courts follow the people. In the eighties 
 and late seventies an emotional prohibition wave 
 was moving over the country. In that day the move- 
 ment probably represented more clamor than senti- 
 ment. The conservatism of the people of most 
 of the states was against it. The feeling was too 
 hysterical, differing greatly from the prohibition 
 movement to-day, which is based upon business con- 
 viction, rather than emotion. So in the nineties we
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 217 
 
 find the courts guarding real sentiment — whether 
 right or wrong is immaterial to the case — against 
 clamor. But to protect conservative sentiment the 
 Court had to reverse a long line of its own deci- 
 sions, and to all practical intent it had to amend the 
 Constitution. But the Supreme Court evidently 
 regards the Constitution as an unimportant matter 
 between friends. For almost an even century prior 
 to 1890, the law of the land has been that the control 
 of intoxicating liquors, including the matter of inter- 
 state shipments, was within the police power of the 
 states. The question has been passed on in the 
 New Hampshire License case (5 How. 279) and the 
 power of the states over such shipments upheld. 
 This doctrine was squarely overruled in Leisy vs. 
 Hardin, 135 U.S. 100 (1890), and it is now contended 
 that Congress is powerless to release to the states 
 the right to regulate or to interfere in any way with 
 interstate shipments of liquor. 
 
 That we may not be considered hasty in the con- 
 clusion that the Constitution is a flexible document, 
 let us consider another phase of its mobility. The 
 alliance between business and politics which Seth 
 Low, former mayor of Greater New York and former 
 president of Columbia University, has chosen to call 
 "a system of feudalism" " fostered by corporate con-
 
 218 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 trol of our government," has clearly considered the 
 demand for equitable rates on railroads as mere 
 demagogic clamor. Some day the courts will see 
 things differently. But seeing things as they saw 
 them, the Constitution had to be amended to check 
 the clamor. 
 
 So we find the Constitution amended again in this 
 wise : After the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment 
 to the Constitution, no state could be sued except 
 at the suit of another state brought in the Supreme 
 Court. It was held uniformly by the courts that a 
 suit against the chief officers of the state was in effect 
 a suit against the state itself, and, therefore, could 
 not be maintained. This was the doctrine of Fitts 
 vs. McGhee, 172 U.S. 516, decided in 1899. There 
 the Supreme Court said: — 
 
 "A suit to restrain officers of a state from taking 
 any steps by means of judicial proceedings, in execu- 
 tion of a state statute to which they do not hold any 
 special relation, is really a suit against the state within 
 the prohibition of the Eleventh Amendment of the 
 federal Constitution." 
 
 In 1908, in the famous Young habeas corpus case, 
 the court announced exactly the contrary doctrine 
 and held that a suit against state officers who were 
 endeavoring to enforce a statute alleged to be uncon- 
 stitutional was not a suit against a state.
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 219 
 
 One more instance may be cited of the pliability 
 of our fundamental law, and we shall finish. It 
 was formerly held that courts of equity could not 
 enjoin the enforcement of criminal statutes; but of 
 late years, the United States courts, while assuming 
 to stand by the same rule, claim that injunctions 
 may be issued to prevent a multiplicity of suits, and 
 for the purpose of enforcing the restraints of the 
 power of states enumerated in the Fourteenth Amend- 
 ment, the federal courts have rarely refused to use 
 the power of injunction to test the validity of state 
 statutes. 
 
 It is more difficult to trace this change, step by 
 step, and from case to case, than the other changes 
 referred to. Nevertheless, the evolution in practice 
 is easily discernible. It has been accomplished rather 
 by magnifying the importance of an exception to the 
 rule, than by a change in the rule itself. 
 
 In the early cases in which the court declined to 
 enjoin the commencement of criminal prosecutions 
 under a state statute they quoted with striking fre- 
 quency the rule as stated in Story's ''Equity Juris- 
 prudence," as follows: — 
 
 "There are, however, cases in which courts of 
 equity will not exercise any jurisdiction by way of 
 injunction to stay proceedings at law. In the first
 
 220 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 place, they will not interfere to stay proceedings in any 
 criminal matters, or in any cases not strictly of a civil 
 nature; as, for instance, they will not grant an in- 
 junction to stay proceedings on a mandamus or an 
 indictment or an information or a writ of prohibition. 
 But this restriction applies only to cases where the 
 parties seeking redress by such proceedings are not 
 the plaintiffs in equity; for, if they are, the court 
 possesses power to restrain them personally from pro- 
 ceeding at the same time, upon the same matter or 
 right, for redress in the form of a civil suit and of a 
 criminal prosecution. In such cases the injunction 
 is merely incidental to the ordinary power of the 
 court to impose terms upon parties who seek its aid 
 in furtherance of their rights." (Vol. 2, Sec. 893). 
 
 In the later cases, however, including the famous 
 case of Ex Parte Young, the court announced a 
 different rule, as follows : — 
 
 "The remedy at law of a railroad company to 
 test the validity of a statute fixing rates for railroad 
 transportation by disobeying the statute once and 
 submitting to a criminal prosecution is not so ade- 
 quate as to deprive equity of jurisdiction, where 
 several years might elapse before a final determina- 
 tion of the question, pending which observance of the 
 statute, if finally found to be invalid, would result 
 in taking its property without due process of law, 
 with no possibility of its recovery." 
 
 Now in all these cases there is no doubt but that 
 the court has decided conscientiously. Moreover, in 
 every case the court, whether consciously or not, was
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 221 
 
 following what, according to its lights, seemed to be 
 the real justice in the matter; and because courts 
 are human, it is more than likely that the court took 
 its color of the right and wrong of the matter from 
 its environment, from the newspapers and maga- 
 zines and books it read, from the men it met, from 
 the public sentiment it felt. That, of course, was 
 unconscious. And in so far as American convictions 
 are deep rooted, the courts — even our Supreme 
 Court — cannot escape from these convictions, and so 
 ultimately the will of the people prevails. 
 
 Now all these opinions of the Supreme Court are 
 set down here, not in disrespect for the courts and 
 laws, but to show how laws, written and unwritten, 
 court-made and enacted, follow the dominant 
 thought of the people. The Granger cases, decided 
 in the seventies, reflected the opinions of men just 
 home from war, to whom property as such was 
 not so sacred as the rights of men. They had 
 seen Lincoln, without constitutional warrant, take 
 $2,000,000,000 worth of legal property in slaves from 
 the slaveholders because it was morally right. So 
 property as opposed to men didn't impress that 
 generation. Then, as the nation became richer, as 
 the struggle for wealth began to engross the people, 
 the Supreme Court unconsciously colored its opin-
 
 222 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 ions, and the "protection of the vested rights of 
 property," became, as announced formally by the 
 United States Court in the Wellman case in the 
 nineties, "the supreme duty of the courts." 
 
 And so when Mark Hanna was the head of the 
 extra-constitutional government, the Supreme Court 
 followed the people and decided that 5 per cent 
 interest on capital was unconstitutional and that 10 
 was not too much. The courts are checks upon 
 public clamor. But when they face public sentiment, 
 they find just as good law on the side of a definitely 
 settled public opinion as there is on the other, and 
 the four to five majority begins to waver toward public 
 sentiment, and so the people rule. And while the 
 courts are hesitating, uncertain whether it is clamor 
 or sentiment that is roaring through the land, the 
 people profit greatly by the unpopular decisions of 
 the courts. For these opinions teach patience — 
 self-restraint — the one great need of democracy. 
 For it develops faith by trying it sorely. And the 
 slowness of the courts to respond to public sentiment 
 is one of the real — though at times amply disguised 
 — blessings of this government. 
 
 There is much ponderous folly about the hair- 
 splitting technicalities of the courts, much irritating 
 caste feeling of the profession expressed in their stupid
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 223 
 
 legal verbiage, and much laziness — both of lawyers 
 and of judges — in the " law's delay"; but after all 
 the courts are the anchors of democracy. And for 
 that matter so is our most flexible Constitution; 
 though many solemn persons think the courts and the 
 Constitution are the foundation of democracy. Yet 
 the Constitution will be picked up by the courts and 
 dragged along after public sentiment as fast as it 
 changes. The Constitution is as responsive to public 
 sentiment after it has definitely settled as any of our 
 institutions, and the courts are as mobile as the 
 people. Persons who are resting their vested wrongs 
 upon the Constitution may as well prepare for a 
 change. For the Constitution, which meant one 
 thing in the Granger days of the seventies and meant 
 another thing in the prosperity days of Hanna, seems 
 to be getting ready to mean something entirely dif- 
 ferent within a few years. 
 
 The trend of recent United States Supreme Court 
 decisions is away from the precedents of ten years 
 ago. The Virginia Corporations Commission deci- 
 sion sets the procedure in certain railroad cases 
 through the state courts. The Los Angeles tele- 
 phone decision refuses to interfere with a rate even 
 though the councilmen making a rate are subject to 
 the recall, and further decides against the company
 
 224 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 (among other things) because they refuse to bring 
 their books before the council to aid the council in 
 making rates — a most important decision. In the 
 Knoxville waterworks decision, the Supreme Court 
 holds that until the water company has actually 
 obeyed the rate-making ordinance it has no right to 
 claim confiscation under the ordinance, and that 
 " bonds and preferred and common stock issued under 
 such conditions (i.e. in return for services not ren- 
 dered) afford neither measure nor guide to the value 
 of the property." The Oregon woman labor case 
 sustains the right of the state to limit the hours of 
 labor of women. 
 
 Even the time-honored " assumed risk" of labor 
 seems to be growing less. For the Supreme Court 
 and practically all the federal circuit courts have 
 sustained the safety appliance law which takes away 
 from railroad men the blessed right to lose legs and 
 arms and lives — or quit work. Moreover, in re- 
 versing Judge Gray of Delaware, in the commod- 
 ities case, the Supreme Court delivered a glancing 
 blow at the Fourteenth Amendment as a protection 
 for property rights; and the blow may produce an 
 abrasion that may develop into a destructive 
 tumor. But the most revolutionary language used 
 by the Supreme Court in many years was used by
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 225 
 
 Justice Moody in reversing Circuit Judge Lurton, 
 now on the Supreme bench. Judge Lurton had 
 suggested that Congress would not pass a law so 
 harsh as to compel railroads to equip their cars with 
 safety appliances at a great (and perhaps the judge 
 thought at a confiscatory) expense. Justice Moody's 
 opinion, reversing 1 Judge Lurton, indicated rather 
 broadly, and almost merrily, that laws had to be harsh 
 to some one, and that the employes were less able to 
 bear the hardships of loss of life and limb than the 
 railroad company's stockholders were to bear losses 
 of dividends. The opinion of Justice Moody will 
 bear reprinting, for it is a definite step in a new 
 direction. He says: 
 
 "Congress, not satisfied with the common law duty 
 (between master and servant) and its resulting 
 liability, has prescribed and defined the duty by 
 statute. We have nothing to do but to ascertain 
 and declare the meaning of a few simple words in 
 which the duty is described. It is enacted that 'no 
 cars, either loaded or unloaded, shall be used in inter- 
 state traffic which do not comply with the standard. 
 There is no escape from the meaning of these words. 
 Explanation cannot clarify them, and should not be 
 employed to confuse them or lessen their signifi- 
 cance. It is urged that this is a harsh construction. 
 To this we reply that, if it be the true construction, 
 its harshness is no concern of the courts. It is said 
 that the liability under the statute, as thus construed, 
 imposes so great a hardship upon the railroads that
 
 226 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 it ought not to be supposed that Congress intended 
 it. . . . But this argument is a dangerous one, and 
 should never be heeded where the hardship would be 
 occasional and exceptional. It would be better, as 
 was once said by Lord Eldon, to look hardship in the 
 face rather than break down the rules of law. . . . 
 " Where an injury happens through the absence 
 of a safe drawbar there must be hardship. Such an 
 injury must be an irreparable misfortune to some one. 
 If it must be borne entirely by him who suffers it, 
 that is a hardship to him. If its burden is trans- 
 ferred, so far as it is capable of transfer, to the em- 
 ployer, it is a hardship to him. It is quite conceivable 
 that Congress, contemplating the inevitable hard- 
 ship of such injuries, and hoping to diminish the 
 economic loss to the community resulting from them, 
 should deem it wise to impose their burdens upon 
 those who could measurably control their causes, 
 instead of upon those who are, in the main, helpless 
 in that regard. Such a policy would be intelligible, 
 and, to say the least, not so unreasonable as to require 
 us to doubt that it was intended and to seek some 
 unnatural interpretation of common words.'' 
 
 These and other recent decisions of the Supreme 
 Court indicate that the court feels the moral impulse 
 that is stirring in the nation. And whatever the 
 people aspire to earnestly, unselfishly, persistently, 
 they may have as the law of the land. 
 
 There is therefore little reason to fear the growing 
 power of the federal courts. They change with 
 public sentiment. Fifty years ago, lawyers used to
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 227 
 
 think that there was no common law in the United 
 States federal practice; that federal courts acquired 
 jurisdiction only by statute, either the acts of Con- 
 gress or the Constitution. But when we freed the 
 negro, we changed all that. The Fourteenth Amend- 
 ment was aimed exclusively at the rights of the freed- 
 man, but it incidentally prohibited states from taking 
 property "without due process of law." Some smart 
 lawyer discovered this phrase, applied it to vested rights 
 of stockholders of corporations. A most interesting 
 book, "The Power to Regulate Corporations and 
 Commerce," 1 by Frank Hendrick, First Ricardo Prize 
 Fellow of Harvard, has been written to prove that 
 not only is there a common law jurisdiction in federal 
 courts, but that under that jurisdiction the federal 
 courts, as the ultimate authority of the federal govern- 
 ment, must have "final determination of rights arising 
 from contract or the use or possession of property." 
 This is advanced ground. But there is no escaping 
 from the logic of this position. There must be a last 
 word in the inevitable struggle between the democracy 
 and the rights of invested capital. The more surely 
 the matter is settled, the more definitely responsibility 
 is fixed, the more equitably will the adjustment of 
 matters at issue be made. Here, then, in the Supreme 
 
 1 Putnams, 1909.
 
 228 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 Court of the United States is our government an- 
 chored. Here will our great problems be settled. 
 Yet how easily this court is reached. Assuming a 
 radical President as the climax of the growth of popu- 
 lar radicalism for six years, in 1916, within two years 
 he could have a radical Supreme Court. Only one 
 or two radical decisions would be needed. The 
 lower courts would fall in line. And unless the peo- 
 ple change their minds in six years, a radical Supreme 
 Court is coming. For after all it is the people's 
 country. They rule — even over the courts. 
 
 And that brings us back to the real foundation of 
 this government — the one institution which shall 
 determine the destiny of the people. That institu- 
 tion is the one institution over which the people have 
 the most absolute control — the public schools. As 
 the matter now stands, we are a people from the sixth 
 grade. And the problem of democracy is not what 
 the secret ballot will do for us, not what direct primary 
 nominations will do for us, not what direct legislation 
 will do for us, not what our commissions and charters 
 and responsible administrators will do for us — not 
 even what the courts will do for us. For these are 
 but machines; means, not ends. The vital question 
 is what will our schools do for us. The problems 
 before this nation require expert treatment. The
 
 THE COURTS THE CHECKS OF DEMOCRACY 229 
 
 supreme court of prices, which Mr. Andrew Carnegie 
 says is bound to come, "disguise it as we may," 
 which our anti-trust laws make necessary, and which 
 President Taft advocated in relation to railroads in 
 his message of January 7, 1910, this supreme court 
 of prices will require great national self-sacrifice — a 
 surrender of many individual rights. This must 
 come from a citizenship of a higher type than the 
 world has ever seen before. For that commission, or 
 whatever body, — whether legal or extra-legal, — 
 which shall finally pass upon the equities of prices in 
 our national workshop will be chosen by the people, 
 
 — perhaps indirectly as the Supreme Court is chosen 
 
 — but still by the people. In the end the people will 
 rule. 
 
 But with all our machinery for self-government, 
 what a botch we are bound to make of our experiment 
 in democracy if the sense of justice of the majorities 
 that rule comes from the sixth grade of our common 
 schools. For as sure as there is a just God, the more 
 we make laws unleashing the power of the people 
 without widening the vision of the people, those laws, 
 those very laws that release the people from politi- 
 cal bondage, will be " vessels of wrath, fitted unto 
 destruction."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 
 
 It is difficult to imagine what a tremendous splash 
 in the tide of humanity was made by the invention of 
 fire-making, or of the lever, or of the wheel. How the 
 current of affairs was changed by each of these de- 
 vices. How many ten thousands of years man con- 
 sumed socializing fire, for instance, slowly and with 
 great labor and many wars taking away the special 
 privileges of priestcraft, or social distinction that 
 went with fire-making to the fire-makers. When'fire- 
 making lost its mystery and became common to all 
 the people, what a change had come over mankind 
 — what advancement had been reached. Man had 
 ceased to migrate with the birds, and had separated 
 himself from the herd into families, had learned to 
 cook, and had lost his hairy coat. With the invention 
 of the wheel came the overthrow of the rule of the 
 strong. And as the mystery of the wheels became 
 common to the people, — through the centuries, — 
 as the wheel became socialized, so that every man 
 
 230
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 231 
 
 might make and have and use a wheel without paying 
 tribute or obeisance, the leash of the strong upon the 
 weak slackened just a little. The history of man has 
 been a story of the socializing of human inventions, 
 taking them from the few who received homage and 
 taxes for them, and distributing the inventions and 
 the blessings they brought among all the people. 
 
 The invention of writing gave us commerce and 
 kings; its socialization gave us the invention of 
 printing. Printing took away the special privileges 
 of the priests, but it gave the power of the 
 priests to the traders; gunpowder armed the com- 
 mon man, and the socialization of gunpowder de- 
 stroyed feudalism, and made our modern democracy 
 possible. Great inventions create classes of men 
 with more or less power over their fellows. Then 
 slowly the people take over the inventions, make 
 them common to the race, and the special privileges 
 attached to a particular invention pass; and with the 
 passing of these privileges the economic, social, and 
 spiritual life of the people changes. 
 
 To-day the world is trying to socialize the invention 
 of steam. The nineteenth century was one of " many 
 inventions." But all of them, that are of first impor- 
 tance in the world, are subsidiary to the discovery of 
 the power of steam, or are interrelated to it. We
 
 232 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 have shown that the economic manifestation of the 
 invention of steam is the invention of the cor- 
 poration. Not that the corporation is new in 
 the world, neither is steam; the vapors of boiling 
 water and the legal partnerships of men have been 
 known for thousands of years. But with the har- 
 nessing of steam came the consolidation of capital. 
 The vast physical power of the steam engine pro- 
 duced the vast economic power of capital. The steam 
 engine is too big for the common man to own. It 
 requires two or twenty or two thousand, or two 
 million, or more, to own it, and to furnish material 
 for the engine to work upon. And, moreover, it put 
 out the individual fires in a million little forges; it 
 took from the homes and shops of the people millions 
 of little wheels, and gathered to itself all the levers 
 in the world. It was as though, by some strange 
 reversion to old days, a great pre- Adamite giant had 
 come stalking into the earth gathering unto himself 
 all the fires and their privileges that men had wrested 
 from him in the morning of time, all the wheels and 
 their privileges and all the levers and their special 
 powers that had passed among men in the childhood 
 of the race. The world stood afraid before the steam 
 engine. And to those who controlled it we gave 
 privileges and rights and immunities that we gave of
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 233 
 
 old to the priestly fire-makers, the kingly wheel 
 owners, the royal purveyors of the secrets of the 
 levers. Steam harnessed by capital made a new 
 mystery that demanded our worship. And how we 
 have bowed to it! Kings, potentates, priests, " prin- 
 cipalities and powers," — all have paid deference to 
 the captain of industry. He who can control capital 
 has stood before kings. Capital has broken caste, 
 the last vestige of feudalism; and where caste exists 
 to-day, it is a hollow shell that will crumble before 
 the new century is much older. Our problem in this 
 century must be the socialization of steam; and in- 
 cidental to that will be the control of capital. 
 
 For to-day, under the present order of things, cap- 
 ital rules the world. Churches are built and creeds 
 formulated to please capital. Wars are begun and 
 ended and nations established and laws enacted for 
 the profit of capital. Politics is the struggle of capital 
 to hold its legal advantage. The priests of capital in 
 the skyscraping temples in the great cities of the world 
 hold dominion over the minds and bodies of the civi- 
 lized people on this planet as the fire-making priests 
 of primeval days ruled their little worlds from altars 
 and caves. For our high priests to-day, holding do- 
 minion over the fires and wheels and levers of the 
 world, have assumed to make the morals of the world
 
 234 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 to fit their convenience, and for their services have 
 exacted such tribute as seemed equitable, to wit, 
 all the traffic will bear. But the reaction is as inev- 
 itable to-day as it was of old. The difference be- 
 tween the reactions will be only a difference of time. 
 We live in a rapid age. The nineteenth century 
 saw the greatest revolution in the world — that from 
 feudalism to industrialism, from the control of kings 
 to the control of capital. The twentieth century 
 will see even a greater revolution — that from the con- 
 trol of capital to the control of men. Capitalism is 
 republican; the next evolutionary step will be toward 
 democracy. For capital, controlling the fires and 
 wheels and levers of the world, after all has been only 
 the world's servant. Steam has been turning power 
 presses, spreading knowledge among men, making 
 electricity to spread intelligence abroad in the earth, 
 to transform distance into a physical fiction, to draw 
 men together in acquaintanceship that in the nature 
 of things must end in brotherhood. Capital, with all 
 its diabolical self-interest, has been engaged in school- 
 ing men well, in housing them warmly, in clothing 
 them decently, in providing them wholesome food, 
 and making them physically and mentally stronger 
 men than ever the world has seen before this genera- 
 tion. It must have been thus that the ancient inven-
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 235 
 
 tions were socialized. As they made man stronger, he 
 captured them. It is a world-old history of human 
 progress. Moreover, the same human nature is work- 
 ing on this our latest problem that worked upon prob- 
 lems that faced man as a child. We face a new fact 
 in the world; fear it; let it establish our moral rela- 
 tion to it, as a thing apart from our common daily 
 run of life; the new fact becomes a fetish, capturing 
 us with its new creed; we struggle and battle and 
 fret ourselves to little avail; and lo ! we see some fine 
 morning that the new fact is to be handled according 
 to no new creed, but according to the old law of kind- 
 ness and that common sense of simple justice between 
 man and man known as righteousness. Thus men 
 have captured and made part of society fires and 
 wheels and levers and printing presses and gunpowder 
 and Christ's creed; and thus we shall capture steam, 
 control capital, and establish democracy, not by in- 
 tricate laws and elaborate government machinery, 
 but by the fundamental kindness of men to men, the 
 basic unselfishness of man widened and applied to 
 men, in their new relations. Only as man's range of 
 unselfishness has extended from the family to human- 
 ity has he grown useful and happy in his usefulness 
 upon this globe. So in the conquest of steam will he 
 win by no new set of morals, but by awakening to
 
 236 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 the widening life that steam has brought, and apply- 
 ing to that greater life his divinely given kindness. 
 
 Now in the contest for the control of capital by 
 society through governments, those who would con- 
 trol capital are divided into differing, if not oppos- 
 ing, schisms or factions or schools: those who would 
 distribute the profits of capital according to the needs 
 of men ; and those who would distribute profits accord- 
 ing to the achievements of men. "From each accord- 
 ing to his ability; to each according to his needs," say 
 the socialists. "From each and to each according to 
 his achievement," say the individualists. "We claim 
 for each man equal rights with all other men," say 
 the socialists. "We claim for each man equal rights 
 to display his inherent inequality to all other men," 
 reply the individualists. "We demand that every 
 man's needs be satisfied," say the socialists. "We 
 concede that certain fundamental needs, such as food 
 and warmth and shelter, be guaranteed by society to 
 every man willing to work — not so much perhaps 
 to help the needy man as to prevent the brutalization 
 of those in plenty," say the individualists, and add, 
 "but after that, all that society should do is to 
 guarantee that every man's actual inequalities of 
 achievement shall be reflected with reasonable ac- 
 curacy in his social rewards."
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 237 
 
 And that brings us to the problem of the century: 
 Shall we control capital as socialists or as individual- 
 ists, distributing the profits of capital according to 
 our needs or according to our achievements, fostering 
 the equality of men or developing their essential 
 inequalities? That we are to control capital and make 
 some much more equitable distribution of the profits 
 of capital than now is made seems indisputable. 
 The vast restlessness of the common people of the 
 world, and particularly of America, proves that. It 
 will be idle for capital to resist control; it will be 
 dangerous to civilization for capital to arrogate to 
 itself the divine right of kings and plead a different 
 and a higher morality to govern its activities. The 
 more capital resists control, the more of it will be 
 destroyed by the struggle to control. The more self- 
 ishness capital puts into the struggle of the people 
 to control it, the more selfishness capital will engender. 
 "As ye sow, so also shall ye reap." But on the other 
 hand, the more fundamental faith in the justice and 
 fairness of men organized in government those who 
 control capital exhibit in the arbitrament of the prob- 
 lem of the century, the more capital will there be in 
 the world when the question is settled. 
 
 But the folly of capital seems to be like the folly 
 of kings. Capital is making the same struggle
 
 238 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 against control and distribution according to needs of 
 men, as witnessed by the contest with the socialists 
 of Europe, that capital is making against the control 
 and distribution of capital according to the honest 
 achievements of men, as witnessed in the contest in 
 America. It is, however, the American contest that 
 interests us chiefly. Here the socialists have perhaps 
 the smallest following they find in any civilized coun- 
 try. Here is an earnest attempt to control capital 
 and distribute its profits solely upon the achieve- 
 ments of men, allowing, of course, for that narrow 
 margin of need which must be provided for if those 
 in comfort shall not grow selfish and brutalized by 
 the constant appearance of cruel want. 
 
 The American struggle to socialize steam by con- 
 trolling capital, this vast new economic growth from 
 the physical fact of steam, may be epitomized by the 
 word " democracy." Democracy, the child of steam, 
 is seeking to control capital, its economic brother. 
 The struggle proves that a real force has come into 
 the world — a social element with its two forms of 
 motion — inward and outward, centripetal and cen- 
 trifugal, egoistic and altrustic, capital and democracy. 
 Now, it may be fairly asked what is democracy trying 
 to do with capital. It may be easily seen that as the 
 control of the government, whether of the city or the
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 239 
 
 state or the nation, passes more directly into the 
 hands of the people, profits shrink. In the earlier 
 chapters of this book, we saw that as money gets out 
 of politics profits decrease in public service corpora- 
 tions. Here are three concrete typical instances: 
 The referendum in the cities makes it impossible 
 to grant franchises carrying large profits for pro- 
 moters, and this forces municipal ownership, which, 
 being translated, means bonds issued at a low rate 
 of interest. In the states men nominated by direct 
 primaries are demanding that railroads issue stocks 
 and bonds only upon the valuation of the property; 
 and that means only legitimate profits in flotation. 
 In the nation, as the people are awakening to their 
 power, presidents, legislatures, and courts are curtail- 
 ing the powers and profits of capital invested in 
 combinations restraining trade. Everywhere that 
 democracy touches capital interest shrinks, profits 
 decrease, dishonest deals and speculations cease. 
 What is democracy trying to do? 
 
 Now, as a working hypothesis, let us suppose that 
 our American democracy is trying to distribute the 
 profits of capital according to the achievement, and 
 not — except secondarily — according to the needs 
 of men. It becomes necessary to define achieve- 
 ment. It may mean one thing yesterday, a certain
 
 240 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 thing to-day, and something entirely different to- 
 morrow. Indeed, the world's progress may be read 
 in the changing definition it makes for achievement. 
 One may say achievement is social service. That 
 sounds definite and certain, as the lawyers put it. 
 But every age sees a change in what it regards as 
 social service. In imperial Rome the soldier was the 
 chief social servant. He had the " power and the 
 glory," because the state was so organized that the 
 soldier deserved much credit for the stability of 
 society. In the Middle Ages the priest was the chief 
 social servant; his achievement was best rewarded, 
 because he held the state together. But with the in- 
 vention of printing and gunpowder the soldier and the 
 priest were no longer needed, and their achievements 
 were unimportant, and they fell back to secondary 
 places in the organization of civilization and took in- 
 ferior rewards. In the transition state between the 
 days of the power of the soldier and the priest on the 
 one hand, and on the other hand our modern days of 
 republicanism, there was a time when the king and the 
 baron and the feudal servants held the social organism 
 together. Then the achievements of the lord and 
 overlord were important, and they had their rewards 
 according to their talents. But the social organism 
 changed. The time came in the last century when
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 241 
 
 the man who could handle wisely the surplus earnings 
 of the people, invested against a rainy day, was the 
 most important man in the state. So the capitalist's 
 social service was deemed the greatest achievement, 
 and he took the place in public esteem and favor, and 
 consequently in power, of the soldier who gave way 
 to the priest, and of the priest who stepped aside for 
 the overlord. 
 
 Now democracy in America is catechizing the capi- 
 talist. We are asking him to define his uses. We 
 are demanding that he show cause why he should 
 not follow the soldier, the priest, and the baron. That 
 is what all this commotion in our politics is about. 
 Over and over we hear this dialogue: "Where did 
 you get it?" asks old Demos, rubbing his eyes. "I 
 earned it," replies Crcesus. "How?" "I built a 
 railroad." "But," insists Demos, "the railroad cost 
 you only twenty million and you took sixty mil- 
 lion." "Promoter's profits," replies Crcesus, begin- 
 ning to move on. "Stop thief," cries old Demos, and 
 hales his friend into court. Or sometimes the dis- 
 pute occurs over the rate charged for a given service. 
 "This is my business, I have a right to its profits," 
 declares Crcesus. "I am your partner," retorts 
 Demos; "but for me you would have no patronage. 
 Let's see the books." And they look at the books,
 
 242 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 and down come the rates, and old Demos chuckles. 
 Or if there is further hitch in the matter, he says, 
 " Come now — down with the rate, or I'll go into busi- 
 ness myself." " Who are 1 you that you should do this 
 un-American thing — invade the domain of private 
 ownership?" "I," replies old Demos, "I am a man." 
 "A mere man," replies Croesus, "and this is a great 
 mystery — this business." "All right," says the cate- 
 chizer, "but I am the man who found that the mys- 
 tery of soldiering was common courage; that the 
 imponderable mystery of the Bible which I took from 
 the priest and opened was common sense, and the 
 inscrutable mystery of government that I took from 
 the overlord was common honesty. Behold, I am 
 ready for another mystery! Come now — down with 
 rates, get your profits down to six per cent, or I shall 
 borrow money from the same widows and orphans 
 that supply you at three per cent, and go into this busi- 
 ness myself." "But the widows and orphans whose 
 earnings I have taken?" whines Croesus. "They 
 are my friends; they will take my notes," replies 
 Demos, "and advertises for bids for the municipal 
 plant. 
 
 But when Demos finds the man who has invented 
 something, whether a business system, a telephone, 
 a combination of effective men, or a religion, there
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 243 
 
 Demos stops. There society is willing to lavish its 
 rewards. That is achievement. All democracy de- 
 mands is value received. If the capitalist can show 
 that, he may have his millions and welcome to the 
 care they bring him — or the joy, if he is wise. In 
 this new definition of achievement which democracy 
 is making for the capitalist, the first requirement is 
 that achievement shall return to society value for the 
 money he gets; next that the money shall be taken 
 honestly. And now by inheritance tax laws in 
 thirty-seven American states democracy is demand- 
 ing that rewards for achievement shall not descend 
 unto the third and the fourth generation. 
 
 It is difficult to say just what democracy's defini- 
 tion of achievement for capital will be ultimately. 
 But it is not difficult to see that the tendency of the 
 definition to-day is toward limiting the legitimately 
 rewardable achievement of the capitalist to the ac- 
 cumulation and investment of the actual surplus 
 earnings of the people with a small profit for handling 
 these funds. Obviously the funds are his in trust. 
 He has earned no large part of them. He is acting 
 for the men and women whose thrift has produced 
 the capital. If he invents business systems and com- 
 binations that have economic value, — that save 
 money for the people and earn large returns honestly,
 
 244 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 — his reward shall be the inventor's rather than the 
 \ capitalist's. But the day of the rule of the captain 
 of industry is rapidly passing in America. In all 
 the world there is not a soldier ruler of any importance. 
 The day of the temporal power of the pope and the 
 cardinal has gone. The king or overlord in civiliza- 
 tion to-day is but a figurehead. And to-morrow the 
 capitalist who now dominates civilization will take 
 his place beside the soldier, the priest, and the states- 
 man — each needed, none absolute. For democracy 
 will have many servants, but no masters. The 
 democratic mind of all the civilized world seems to 
 be coming to the conclusion — by leaps and bounds 
 in Europe, and slowly in America — that much of 
 the pretended achievement of capital is empirical. 
 In thousands of instances the people have seen pro- 
 moters and operators taking great rewards from the 
 public, and giving back slight value to society. So 
 little by little the people have lost their faith in the 
 divine right of capital to rule. They have seen the 
 sham of it, and letter upon letter, word upon word, they 
 have read the dishonesty of these shoddy transactions. 
 Clamor is ceasing. But there is a deepening con- 
 viction in the American mind that capital shall not 
 be a law unto itself. Thus we find in many of our 
 great cities, in certain of the states, and in the nation
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 245 
 
 definite legal restrictions upon the issue of stocks and 
 bonds, upon the rates of public service corporations, 
 upon the character of the service required from public 
 service corporations; prohibitions of many activities 
 in which great aggregations of capital are invested, 
 and special taxes upon capital for the mere privilege 
 of doing business. These restrictions, prohibitions, 
 and special taxes are new things in our politics. Ten 
 years ago one heard them referred to as un-American, 
 just as the old Tories of England used to denounce 
 any interference with the king's prerogatives as 
 'treason." But kings and capital are no longer 
 sacred. The once un-American limitations of the 
 activities of capital are increasing steadily. As 
 money leaves politics by special invitation of democ- 
 racy, the rights of property are growing narrower and 
 narrower; the rights of men, broader and broader. 
 Achievements of men with capital are defining them- 
 selves more and more closely into the sphere of rigid 
 honesty; not a new-fashioned legal honesty, but 
 an old-fashioned Mosaic honesty. Morals have not 
 changed, but light is turning upon certain shady 
 transactions, and democracy understands them. It 
 is applying to them not so much a quickened, as an 
 enlightened, conscience. It is not so much a moral 
 awakening that we have had, as a moral enlighten-
 
 248 THE OLD ORDER CHANQETH 
 
 ment. The schools have taught the people, the 
 people have revived the politicians, and they have 
 remade the law. But so far as the changes in our 
 national life have been political, they do not seem 
 to be manifest so deeply in laws recasting our moral 
 and economic relations, as they are manifest in laws 
 broadening the scope of the individual's participa- 
 tion in the city, the state, and the national govern- 
 ments. 
 
 Democracy is arming itself with the full power of 
 the ballot. It is vastly more important that it shall 
 have weapons and equipment for the fight than that 
 it shall have a programme. The laws enacted during 
 the past ten years restricting capital are unimportant. 
 The prohibitions upon capital are unimportant — 
 though they are widespread. And the taxation of 
 capital is of little permanent significance — though 
 the tendency to tax capital is growing. The im- 
 portant thing, the permanent thing, manifest in our 
 growth as a people is the growth of democratic in- 
 institutions — the broadening and deepening of the 
 power of the people as shown by the adoption of 
 the secret ballot, the purification of the party system, 
 the spread of the direct primary, and the popular 
 acceptance of the initiative and referendum and 
 the recall. The deepening power of the people
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 247 
 
 means that the people are preparing by some sub- 
 conscious prescience for a great struggle. They do 
 not know de^nitel ywhat it IHT In the nat ure of 
 things they may have no programme. A cut and 
 dried platform, a formal declaration of principles, an 
 economic or a social scheme would limit the scope of 
 the movement and curtail its usefulness. Democ- 
 racy of the twentieth century may have no prophet 
 now — no leader now. It must grow. Coming 
 events must be met, not by a party or a set of prin- 
 ciples, but by an attitude of mind. The reaction 
 must be simple, but inevitable. In the socialization 
 of steam which shall equalize the forces of capital 
 and democracy of only this we may be certain: that 
 in its outward form our social, economic, and polit- 
 ical organization shall change; but that human 
 nature, which is essentially kind and also essentially 
 selfish, shall remain the same. But we may hope at 
 least that the essential selfishness of men may be 
 tempered by the coming change into some form of 
 selfishness wherein kindness may extend the selfish- 
 ness of the man from his family or his clan, or even 
 from his city or his state, to a larger group, so that 
 he may be greedy for the common good. 
 
 For it is indisputable that we are acquiring a 
 national public sentiment. Our public men in office
 
 248 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 and out of office are giving a national expression to our 
 common aspirations. This national public sentiment 
 is not the belief of our rich men, nor of our slums. It is 
 not the trained judgment of the intellectually fittest, 
 neither is it the bias of the uninformed. It is calm 
 crowd judgment, amalgamated in the heat of discus- 
 sion, but cooled in sober second thought. It holds 
 about so much selfishness as imbues the average man, 
 and it goes only so far toward reform as the average 
 man is willing to go toward self-reform. But the 
 important thing about it, the net result of agitation 
 in America for ten years, is the nation alization of the 
 opinion of the average man. He now finds himself 
 thinking, not merely in "cities, not merely in states, 
 but as an American. The great achievement of the 
 past ten years is the exaltation of the individual by 
 putting him in accord, not with the opinion of the 
 leaders of business, of politics, of the college world, 
 but the opinion of his kind, a coordinated, definitely 
 formed characteristic American conviction of the 
 meaning of life. 
 
 But the rise of the people is manifest otherwise 
 than in politics. A certain amount of the complaint 
 against the increased cost of living may be satisfied 
 when one considers the increased standard of living. 
 Men are no longer willing to eat and wear and read
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 249 
 
 and believe and enjoy and endure what they did twenty 
 or even ten years ago. Eliminating from consideration 
 for a moment the submerged tenth, and taking the 
 average man who lives on $75 a month, and one finds 
 that the average man's taste is for much better things 
 in food and clothes and houses and books and pleas- 
 ures and comforts than it was twenty years ago. 
 Millions of men are living on a scale now that was 
 possible only to a few thousands before the Civil War. 
 Modern plumbing, telephones, gas for cooking, and 
 electric lights are no longer luxuries for the American 
 masses — these things are comforts. They are re- 
 quired, not dreamed of. We are paying more for our 
 meat than we ever paid before in a time of peace. 
 Doubtless a few pennies on the pound are being 
 stolen by the packers' trust; but we are paying the 
 farmer more for the meat on the hoof — more in 
 clothes and food and houses and books and creature 
 comforts than any other farmer on earth ever re- 
 ceived. We are paying more for our cotton than we 
 have paid for fifty years. But we are paying the cot- 
 ton spinner — not so well as we should to be sure — 
 more in housing, food, clothing, and education 
 for his children than any other cotton spinner ever 
 received. We are paying more for our gold than 
 ever we paid before; but much of the increased
 
 250 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 price goes to the gold miner in better food, better 
 cabins, better tools, and shorter hours than we gave 
 to the men in the mines of '49. We are paying more 
 for our houses than we paid for our houses twenty- 
 years ago ; but they are better houses, and men in the 
 building trades and the workers in the lumber camps 
 and mines and forges receive a share of the increased 
 price for our houses in increased comforts. Steam 
 enters into all this; steam lightens the burdens of 
 workmen. Steam shortens working hours; steam 
 has converted the luxuries of our fathers into the 
 comforts we demand. Steam has broadened our lives, 
 bringing us books and newspapers and music and 
 thousands of beautiful things. Steam has given 
 us electricity and has made the nation a neighbor- 
 hood. It has organized the public mind, making 
 democracy articulate. In all these matters of better 
 living, of more complete understanding, of higher 
 aspiration, has steam been socialized. Only as steam 
 manifests itself in great aggregations of capital that 
 assume to dwell apart in a unique moral atmosphere, 
 like kings and priests and warrior gods of old, is steam 
 unsocialized. But even capital is passing rapidly 
 under popular control. Another generation will see 
 the worst of the struggle for the control of capital 
 well finished; not that the millennium will come then
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 251 
 
 — not at all. As life widens, it finds new obstacles. 
 Growth is struggle. "God fulfills himself in many 
 ways." It is a dream to believe that greed may be 
 abolished. In all the centuries lust has not been abol- 
 ished, nor anger, nor hate, nor envy. Yet they are 
 in chains. It is not visionary to assume if we go for- 
 ward during this century as rapidly toward the social- 
 ization of steam as we went during the last century, 
 that we may put the man who issues what the United 
 States Supreme Court has seen fit to call " fictitious 
 capital, " or the man who floats bonds not based on 
 actual valuation of property, on a footing with the 
 man who violates a home or assaults a woman. We 
 may put the man who manufactures impure food and 
 poisonous drinks in the same category with the fence 
 and the gambler. We may give the trust magnate 
 who refuses to share exorbitant profits with his em- 
 ployes and his customers a social status with the 
 burglar. We may fetter greed, as we have fettered 
 our other human vices. And it will be done, as all our 
 advancement in this life has been made, not by 
 making laws, but by creating broader fives than our 
 fathers knew. 
 
 And what a magnificent breeding place we have, 
 here on this continent! The three fates, variation, 
 segregation, and selection, may weave from our
 
 252 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 social threads such cloth as the world has never seen. 
 The best blood of the earth is here — a variated 
 blood of strong indomitable men and women brought 
 here by visions of wider lives. But this blood will 
 remain a clean Aryan blood, because there are no 
 hordes of inferior races about us to sweep over us and 
 debase our stock. We are segregated by two oceans 
 from the inferior races, and by that instinctive race 
 revulsion to cross-breeding that marks the American 
 wherever he is found. Our social laws permit the 
 best to choose the best; our customs, our traditions, 
 our ideals, all inspire youth to trust their human 
 instincts, to select their mates, the fairest with the 
 fairest, with little thought of caste or class, or of aught 
 but good mating. Our aristocracy is not of wealth or 
 of station; our leaders are the clean-bred children 
 of a natural selection unknown before in human 
 history. Our children grow up with the feeling of 
 community strongly upon them. The "we" feeling 
 is pressed upon them in the common schools, in the 
 common playgrounds and in homes, linked to hu- 
 manity as no other homes have ever been joined. 
 The electric wire, the iron pipe, the street railroad, 
 the daily newspaper, the telephone, the lines of 
 transcontinental traffic by rail and water, intimate 
 relations with the city, the state, and the federal gov-
 
 A LOOK AHEAD 253 
 
 ernment have made us all of one body — socially, 
 industrially, politically. Under our quickened demo- 
 cratic institutions the common man has an equal 
 vote with his uncommon neighbor. The demo- 
 cratic environment fairly burns the spirit of human 
 brotherhood upon the growing child. The world is 
 near him. There are no outlanders. It is possible 
 for all men to understand one another; thus hatreds 
 are minimized, and charity stimulated. Thus in a 
 clean home, with wholesome food, in decent clothes, 
 the average well-bred child enters the environment 
 of our democracy. Wars do not mow down the first- 
 born and degrade the breed. Competition gives his 
 sinews all the strain they will stand. This child of 
 the new century may be trusted to see visions — ■ 
 and to follow them. We of this generation have 
 done somewhat to solve the problems that steam has 
 brought to us. And we are by no means done 
 with our day's work. Indeed it is but dawn in the 
 new day of spiritual awakening. Let us touch those 
 who still sleeping wear the joy of youth upon their 
 faces and say, with the prophet of old : — 
 
 "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of 
 the Lord is risen upon thee."
 
 254 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 
 
 In the "Massachusetts Railroad and Railway Laws of 
 of 1908" we read: — 
 
 The provisions of this act shall not impair the rights of 
 the commonwealth, as asserted or reserved in previous 
 statutes ; and the commonwealth may at any time during 
 the continuance of the charter of a railroad corporation, 
 after the expiration of twenty years from the opening of 
 its railroad for use, purchase of the corporation, its rail- 
 road and all its franchise, property, rights and privileges, 
 by paying therefor such amount as will reimburse to it the 
 amount of capital paid in, with a net profit thereon of ten 
 per cent, a year, from the time of the payment thereof by 
 the stockholders, to the time of the purchase. 
 
 (Section 7) The commonwealth may at any time after 
 one year's notice, in writing to a railroad corporation, take 
 and possess its railroad franchise and other property and 
 shall pay therefor such compensation as may be awarded 
 by three commissioners, who shall be appointed by the su- 
 preme judicial court who shall be sworn to appraise the 
 same justly and fairly, and who shall estimate and deter- 
 mine all damages sustained by it by such taking. A cor- 
 poration which is aggrieved by their determination, may 
 have its damages assessed by a jury in the superior court 
 for the county of Suffolk, in the manner provided in 
 section 90, chapter 48, of the revised laws.
 
 FEDERAL JUDGES APPOINTED FROM 1901 TO 1909, 
 
 WITH THOSE WHO INDORSED THEM AND 
 
 SECURED THEIR APPOINTMENTS 
 
 Supreme Court of the United States 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Massachusetts, Dec. 4, 1902. No 
 
 papers. 
 William R. Day, Ohio, Feb. 25, 1903. No papers. 
 William H. Moody, Massachusetts, Dec. 17, 1906. No papers. 
 
 United States Circuit Judges 
 
 Francis C. Lowell, First Circuit, Boston, Mass., Feb. 23, 1905. 
 
 Appt. recommended by Senators Lodge and Crane. 
 Alfred C. Coxe, Second Circuit, Utica, N.Y., June 3, 1902. Appt. 
 
 recommended by Edmund Wetmore. 
 Henry G. Ward, Second Circuit, New York City, Dec. 17, 1907. 
 
 Appt. recommended by Senators Piatt and Depew ; Judges 
 
 Coxe, Townsend, and Lacombe. 
 Walter C. Noj r es, Second Circuit, New London, Conn., Dec. 18, 
 
 1907. Appt. recommended by Senators Brandegee, Bulke- 
 
 ley, and Knox; Representatives Lilley and Russel, and 
 
 Governor Woodruff. 
 Joseph Buffington, Third Circuit, Pittsburg, Dec. 11, 1906. 
 
 Appt. recommended by all members of Congress from 
 
 Pennsylvania except Palmer and Deemer; papers referred 
 
 by Senator Penrose; recommended by State Judges and 
 
 Andrew Carnegie. 
 Peter C. Pritchard, Fourth Circuit, Asheville, N.C., April 27, 
 
 1904. Thirty- three senators. 
 255
 
 256 APPENDIX 
 
 John K. Richards, Sixth Circuit, Cincinnati, Feb. 25, 1903. No 
 
 papers. 
 Francis E. Baker, Seventh Circuit, Indianapolis, Jan. 21, 1902. 
 
 Attorneys and bar associations, etc. ; papers filed by Senator 
 
 Fairbanks. 
 William H. Seaman, Seventh Circuit, Sheboygan, Wis., Mar. 1, 
 
 1905. Appt. recommended by Senators Spooner and 
 
 Quarles, and Judge Grosscup. 
 Christian C. Kohlsaat, Seventh Circuit, Chicago, 111., Mar. 18, 
 
 1905. Appt. recommended by H. M. Snapp, M. C, Atty. 
 
 General Moody, C. H. Robb, Asst. Atty. General, and various 
 
 attorneys of Chicago. 
 Willis Van Devanter, Eighth Circuit, Cheyenne, Wyo., Feb. 18, 
 
 1903. No papers. 
 William C. Hook, Eighth Circuit, Leavenworth, Kan., Nov. 17, 
 
 1903. Senator Long, Senator McCumber, Senator Stone; 
 
 Representatives Curtis, Campbell, Reeder, Miller, Scott, 
 
 Calderhead, Bowersock, Marshall, and Spalding. 
 Elmer B. Adams, Eighth Circuit, St. Louis, Dec. 12, 1905. 
 
 Appt. recommended by Judges Van Devanter, Rodges, 
 
 Phillips, Trieber, Marshall, Riner, Sanborn, and Amidon. 
 
 United States District Judges 
 
 Alabama, Northern. Oscar R. Hundley, Birmingham, May 30, 
 1908. Judge Hundley's indorsements at the Senate. Indorse- 
 ments filed at Dept. of Justice, since sending papers to 
 Senate, from Jos. O. Thompson, Collector of Internal Rev- 
 enue, Birmingham., Ala. ; J. E. Shelby, President Birming- 
 ham Board of Trade; Jno. O. Turner, President Ashville 
 College, Ashville, Ala. 
 
 Alabama, Middle and Northern. Thos. Goode Jones, Mont- 
 gomery, Dec. 17, 1901. Judge Jones indorsed by State
 
 APPENDIX 257 
 
 Circuit Judges Richardson and Haralson ; J. W. Dimmick, 
 Nat. Committeeman; Stewart L. Woodford, New York. 
 
 California, Northern. Wm. C. Van Fleet, San Francisco, Dec. 
 17, 1907. Judge Van Fleet indorsed by Senators Perkins 
 and Flint, Cal., W. H. Beatty, Chief Justice, Sup. Court, 
 Cal.; and Wm. W. Morrow, U. S. Circuit Judge, S. F. 
 
 Colorado. Robert E. Lewis, Denver. Apr. 10, 1906. Judge 
 Lewis recommended by Wm. Lennox, of Colorado Springs, 
 letters transmitted by Senator N. B. Scott, with favorable 
 recommendation; Chas. Nagel, lawyer, St. Louis; D. B. 
 Fairley, Chairman Repub. State Cent. Com., Denver, Colo. 
 
 Connecticut. James P. Piatt, Hartford, Mar. 23, 1902. Judge 
 Piatt recommended by Wm. K. Townsend, U. S. Judge, 
 Conn. ; C. A. Russell, M. C. ; Prof. Wayland, Dean of 
 Faculty, Yale Law School. 
 
 Florida, Northern. Wm. B. Sheppard, Pensacola, May 20, 1908. 
 Judge Sheppard recommended by Hon. J. B. Whitfield, of 
 Supreme Court of Florida ; Hon. C. W. Russell, Asst. Atty. 
 General, and others. 
 
 Idaho. Frank S. Dietrich, Boise, Dec. 17, 1907. Judge Dietrich 
 indorsed as to qualifications by Senator Heyburn; recom- 
 mended by Jno. S. Bagley, ex- Atty. General of Idaho, and 
 many state officials, judges, etc., and numerous lawyers, 
 ministers, etc. 
 
 Illinois, Northern. Kenesaw M. Landis, Chicago, Mar. 18, 1905. 
 Judge Landis indorsed by Hon. F. E. Baker, U. S. Circuit 
 Judge; A. B. Anderson, U. S. Dist. Judge, Indiana; ten 
 state judges, 111., and other Chicago officials and attorneys. 
 
 Illinois, Eastern. Francis M. Wright, Urbana, Mar. 17, 1905. 
 Note : Judge Wright was appointed Judge Court of Claims, 
 D. C, on Jan. 13, 1903, on recommendation of Senator Hop- 
 kins and Speaker Cannon. His appointment as Judge in 
 111., Eastern, was made on account of same recommendations.
 
 258 APPENDIX 
 
 Indiana. Albert B. Anderson, Indianapolis, Dec. 8, 1902. Judge 
 Anderson recommended by E. D. Crumpacker, M. C. ; Jas. 
 H. Jordan, Judge Sup. Court, Indiana, and eight other state 
 judges; H. C. Pettit, U. S. Marshal. 
 
 Iowa, Northern. Henry Thos. Reed, Crasco, Mar. 7, 1904. 
 Judge Reed recommended by Hon. W. B. Allison and Hon. 
 J. P. Dolliver, and five members of Congress. 
 
 Kansas. John C. Pollock, Topeka, Dec. 1, 1903. Judge Pollock 
 indorsed by state judges, senators, and attorneys (papers 
 filed by Senator Long, of Kansas; D. T. Flynn, ex-Del. 
 from Okla. ; Gov. Ferguson, of Okla., S. R. Peters, ex-M. C. 
 
 Kentucky, Eastern. A. M. J. Cochran, Maysville, Dec. 17, 1901. 
 Papers filed by Senator Lindsay ; indorsed by state judges, 
 senators, bar associations, etc. 
 
 Lousiana, Eastern. Eugene D. Saunders, New Orleans, Feb. 20, 
 1907. Indorsed by Chief Justice and Associate Justices 
 Supreme Court, La., Senator McEnery, President Tulane 
 University. 
 
 Maine. Clarence Hale, Portland, July 1, 1902. Indorsed by 
 Senators Hale and Frye, and Representatives Allen, Little- 
 field, and Powers. 
 
 Massachusetts. Frederic Dodge, Boston, Feb. 23, 1905. Appt. 
 recommended by Senators Lodge and Crane, Massachusetts. 
 
 Michigan, Western. Loyal E. Knappen, Grand Rapids, Dec. 10, 
 1907. No papers. 
 
 Minnesota. Page Morris, Duluth, July 1, 1903. Appt. recom- 
 mended by Senators Nelson and Clapp; members of Con- 
 gress, governor, etc. 
 
 Minnesota. Milton D.Purdy, Minneapolis, July 6, 1908. Papers 
 at the Senate. 
 
 Missouri, Eastern. David P. Dyer, St. Louis, Apr. 1, 1907. 
 Appt. recommended by Senator Warner ; Jno. F. Phillips, 
 U. S. Dist. Judge; Governor Folk, Mo.; and various state 
 judges.
 
 APPENDIX 259 
 
 Montana. William H. Hunt, Helena, April 19, 1904. No papers. 
 
 Nevada. Edward S. Farrington, Carson City, Jan. 10, 1907, 
 Appt. recommended by Senator Nixon, Governor Sparks, 
 and Hon. W. M. Stewart. 
 
 New Jersey. Joseph Cross, Elizabeth, Mar. 17, 1905. Appt. 
 recommended by Senators Kean and Dryden. 
 
 New York, Northern. George W. Ray, Norwich, Dec. 8, 1902. 
 Appt. recommended by W. H. Johnson, attorney, and 
 Titus Sheard. 
 
 New York, Southern. George C. Holt, New York City, Mar. 3, 
 1903. Appt. recommended by Hon. Addison Brown, ex- 
 U. S. Judge; Jas. B. Reynolds, Coudert Brothers, Andrew 
 Carnegie, B. S. Coler. 
 
 New York, Southern. Charles M. Hough, New York City, June 
 27, 1906. Appt. recommended by E. B. Whitney, ex-Asst. 
 A. G. ; George W. Wickersham, and numerous other mem- 
 bers of New York City bar; Wm. G. Choate, Henry W. 
 Taft, H. G. Ward. 
 
 New York, Eastern. Thos. Ives Chatfield, Brooklyn, Jan. 9, 
 
 1907. Appt. recommended by U. S. Atty. Vreeland, N. J. ; 
 Editor Brooklyn Daily Times; A. J. Rose, attorney; also 
 re-filed letters from Senator Piatt, Hon. E. B. Thomas, and 
 others, originally filed for appt. as judge, Southern New 
 York. 
 
 Ohio, Northern. Robert W. Taylor, Cleveland, Feb. 1, 1905. 
 Appt. recommended by Jas. Kennedy, M. C; J. J. Sullivan, 
 U. S. Atty. ; Myron T. Herrick, and Josiah Strong. 
 
 Ohio, Southern. John E. Sater, Columbus, May 30, 1906. 
 Papers at the Senate. 
 
 Oklahoma, Eastern. Ralph E. Campbell, McAlester, Jan. 13, 
 
 1908. Appt. recommended by Gov. Frantz, Okla. ; State 
 Chairman Hunter: O. A. Wells, Sec'y State Cent. Com.; 
 also many lawyers and territorial officials.
 
 260 APPENDIX 
 
 Oklahoma, Western. John H. Cotteral, Guthrie, Jan. 13, 1908. 
 No papers. 
 
 Oregon. Charles E. Wolverton, Portland, Jan. 10. 1905. Appt. 
 recommended by Hon. Wm. B. Gilbert, U. S. Circuit Judge, 
 Portland ; Hon. Wm. W. Morrow, U. S. Circuit Judge, San 
 Francisco ; Francis J. Heney, lawyer, San Francisco. 
 
 Pennsylvania, Eastern. James B. Holland, Philadelphia, Apr. 19, 
 1904. Appt. recommended by Senators Quay and Penrose, 
 nine members of Congress, and Gov. Pennypacker. 
 
 Pennsylvania, Middle. Robert W. Archbald, Scranton, Dec. 17, 
 1901. Appt. recommended by Senator Quay, Represen- 
 tatives Demmer, Grow, and Kirkpatrick ; U. S. Judges 
 Acheson and McPherson ; and several state judges. 
 
 Pennsylvania, Western. James S. Young, Pittsburg, Feb. 1, 
 1908. Appt. recommended by Senators Knox and Penrose. 
 
 Tennessee, Eastern and Middle. Edward T. Sanford, Knoxville, 
 May 18, 1908. Appt. recommended by W. D. Beard, Ch. 
 Justice, and Jno. K. Shields, Asso. Justice, Sup. Court, 
 Tenn. ; C. H. Harvey, President Knoxville Railway & Light 
 Co., and Grim and Webb, lawyers, Knoxville. 
 
 Tennessee, Western. John E. McCall, Memphis, Jan. 17, 1905. 
 Appt. recommended by Representatives Cannon, Brown- 
 low, Hemenway, Gibson, Richardson, Pierce, Jenkins, 
 Benton, and Bingham ; U. S. Judges Evans and Clark. 
 Texas, Southern. Waller T. Burns, Houston, July 1, 1902. 
 Papers filed by Senators Lodge, Millard, and Quay; the 
 latter speaks of " my friend Burns " ; Cecil A. Lyon, Chair- 
 man Rep. State Ex. Com., and eight Congressional Chair- 
 men of Committees. 
 
 Vermont. James L. Martin, Brattleboro, Dec. 11, 1906. Appt. 
 recommended by Senators Proctor and Dillingham, and the 
 two members of Congress from Vermont. 
 
 Virginia, Western. H. Clay McDowell, Lynchburg, Dec. 18, 1901.
 
 APPENDIX 261 
 
 Appt. recommended by Rep. Boreing, C. B. Slemp; state 
 
 judges and senators ; President United States Civil Service 
 
 Commission (Proster) ; president and officers of L. & N. 
 
 Railway. 
 Washington, Eastern. Edward Whitson, Spokane, Mar. 14, 1905. 
 
 Appt. recommended by Senators Ankeny and Piles ; former 
 
 Senator A. G. Foster ; Representatives Jones, Cushman, and 
 
 Humphrey; state judges, lawyers, etc. 
 West Virginia, Northern. Alston G. Dayton, Philippi, Mar. 14, 
 
 1905. No papers. 
 West Virginia, Southern. Benjamin F. Keller, Bramwell, Dec. 17. 
 
 1901. Appt. recommended by Senator Scott, and W. M. O. 
 
 Dawson, Sec'y of State and State Chairman. 
 Wisconsin, Eastern. Joseph V. Quarles, Milwaukee, Mar. 6, 1905. 
 
 Appt. recommended by Senator Spooner. 
 Wisconsin, Western. Arthur L. Sanborn, Madison, Jan. 9, 1905. 
 
 Appt. recommended by Senator Spooner; Judges Harlan, 
 
 Jenkins, Grosscup, Baker, Dyer, and Bunn. 
 
 Court of Claims 
 
 Stanton J. Peelle, Indiana, Jan. 1, 1906. No papers. Judge 
 Peelle was originally appointed Judge Court of Claims, 
 March 28, 1892. 
 
 Fenton W. Booth, Illinois, Mar. 17, 1905. Judge Booth recom- 
 mended by Speaker Cannon, James B. Ricks, Chief Justice 
 Supreme Court, Illinois; J. H. Cartwright and J. W. Wil- 
 kins, Justice Supreme Court, Illinois. 
 
 George W. Atkinson, West Virginia, Jan. 16, 1906. Judge 
 Atkinson recommended by Senator Scott, Joseph H. Gaines, 
 M. C. ; Albert B. White, governor of West Virginia ; Vice- 
 President Fairbanks ; Senator Elkins, and four representa- 
 tives from West Virginia. 
 
 Samuel S. Barney, Wisconsin, Jan. 1, 1906. Judge Barney
 
 262 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 recommended by Senator Spooner, and eleven Republican 
 
 Members of Congress from Wisconsin. 
 As showing how little money counts in American political 
 life, the expenses of the Interstate Commerce Law Convention, 
 from November, 1900, until June, 1906, is herewith appended. 
 During that time the sentiment was organized that forced the 
 passage of the Hepburn railroad law. The recapitulated list 
 of expenses and disbursements follows : — 
 
 Recapitulation as to Interests 
 
 Agricultural $ 992 50 
 
 Grain, Hay, and Commission . . 1,135 00 
 Boards of Trade and Commercial 
 
 Bodies 9,475 00 
 
 Flour Millers 4,425 02 
 
 General Manufacturers . . . 1,657 00 
 
 Livestock 1,200 00 
 
 Lumber 2,345 00 
 
 Individuals and Concerns . . . 1,625 00 
 
 $22,855 02 
 
 Disbursements 
 
 For Printing $4,216 61 
 
 Stationery 704 66 
 
 Postage 2,906 98 
 
 Telegrams 321 48 
 
 Express 130 37 
 
 Exchange 7 18 
 
 Chairman's Traveling Expenses . 1,487 55 
 
 Chairman's Clerical Assistance . 1,767 44 
 
 Secretary's Salary . . . 7,112 25 
 
 Secretary's Traveling Expenses . 2,580 90 
 
 Secretary's Office Expenses . . 259 92 
 
 Secretary's Clerical Assistance . 393 27 
 Convention, Executive Committee 
 
 and Incidental Expenses . 1,448 37 
 
 Total Disbursements . 
 
 $23,336 58 
 
 Deficit 
 
 $48156
 
 APPENDIX 263 
 
 THE MUNICIPAL RECALL 
 
 Below will be found the recall law, as it is used in cities having 
 the Des Moines plan of government by commission. About five 
 million people now are living in cities or in a state having the 
 power to recall certain public officers under this or similar acts. 
 
 Sec. 18. The holder of any elective office may be removed at 
 any time by the electors qualified to vote for a successor of such 
 incumbent. The procedure to effect the removal of an incum- 
 bent of an elective office shall be as follows : A petition signed 
 by electors entitled to vote for a successor to the incumbent 
 sought to be removed, equal in number to at least twenty-five 
 percentum of the entire vote for all candidates for the office of 
 mayor at the last preceding general municipal election, demand- 
 ing an election of a successor of the person sought to be removed 
 shall be filed with the city clerk, which petition shall contain a 
 general statement of the grounds for which the removal is sought. 
 The signatures to the petition need not all be appended to one 
 paper, but each signer shall add to his signature his place of resi- 
 dence, giving the street and number. One of the signers of each 
 such papers shall make oath before an officer competent to ad- 
 minister oaths that the statements therein made are true as he 
 believes, and that each signature to the paper appended is the 
 genuine signature of the person whose name it purports to be. 
 Within ten days from the date of filing such petition the city 
 clerk shall examine and from the voters' register ascertain 
 whether or not said petition is signed by the requisite number 
 of qualified electors, and, if necessary, the council shall allow 
 him extra help for that purpose ; and he shall attach to said 
 petition his certificate, showing the result of said examination. 
 If by the clerk's certificate the petition is shown to be insufficient, 
 it may be amended within ten days from the date of said certifi- 
 cate. The clerk shall, within ten days after such amendment,
 
 264 APPENDIX 
 
 make like examination of the amended petition, and if his cer- 
 tificate shall show the same to be insufficient, it shall be returned 
 to the person filing the same; without prejudice, however, to 
 the filing of a new petition to the same effect. If the petition 
 shall be deemed to be sufficient, the clerk shall submit the same 
 to the council without delay. If the petition shall be found to 
 be sufficient, the council shall order and fix a date for holding the 
 said election, not less than thirty days or more than forty days 
 from the date of the clerk's certificate to the council that a suffi- 
 cient petition is filed. 
 
 The council shall make, or cause to be made, publication of 
 notice and all arrangements for holding such election, and the 
 same shall be conducted, returned and the result thereof de- 
 clared, in all respects as are other city elections. The successor 
 of any officer so removed shall hold office during the unexpired 
 term of his predecessor. Any person sought to be removed may 
 be a candidate to succeed himself, and unless he requests other- 
 wise in writing, the clerk shall place his name on the official 
 ballot without nomination. In any such removal election, the 
 candidate receiving the highest number of votes shall be declared 
 elected. At such election if some other person than the incum- 
 bent receives the highest number of votes the incumbent shall 
 thereupon be deemed removed from the office upon qualification 
 of his successor. In case the party who receives the highest 
 number of votes should fail to qualify, within ten days after 
 receiving notification of election, the office shall be deemed 
 vacant. If the incumbent receives the highest number of votes 
 he shall continue in office. The same method of removal shall 
 be cumulative and additional to the methods heretofore pro- 
 vided by law. — 
 
 The following is a copy of the Nebraska law — which is prac- 
 tically a copy of the Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada acts — giving 
 the people a direct vote upon United States senator. After the
 
 APPENDIX 265 
 
 August primaries have nominated the senatorial candidates of 
 the two parties, their names are put upon the ballot, as pro- 
 vided in the following section : — 
 
 Sec. 9. (United States senator.) At the general election 
 immediately preceding the expiration of the term of a United 
 States senator from this state, the electors shall, by ballot, 
 express their preference for some person for the office of United 
 States senator. The votes to be canvassed and returned in the 
 manner hereinafter provided. 
 
 Before the primary candidates for the legislature are pledged 
 to vote for the people's choice in this manner : — 
 
 Sec. 117P (Same — Legislative candidates.) Any elector 
 seeking nomination as a candidate for the legislature at the 
 primaries where such candidates are chosen may include in the 
 application to have his name placed upon the official primary 
 ballot provided for in Section 5866 (?) of Cobbey's Annotated 
 Statutes for 1907 (117f) any one of the two following statements, 
 but if he does not do so the officer with whom the application is 
 filed shall not, on that account, refuse to file his petition or place 
 his name on the official ballot: Statement No. 1. I hereby 
 state to the people of Nebraska, as well as to the people of my 
 legislative district, that during my term of office I will always 
 vote for that candidate for United States senator in Congress 
 who has received the highest number of the people's votes for 
 that position at the general election next, preceding the election 
 of a senator in Congress, without regard to my individual pref- 
 erence (Signature of the candidate for nomination.) 
 
 If the candidate shall be unwilling to sign the above statement, 
 then he may sign the following statement as a part of his peti- 
 tion : Statement No. 2. During my term of office I shall con- 
 sider the vote of the people for United States senator in Congress 
 as nothing more than a recommendation, which I shall be at
 
 266 APPENDIX 
 
 liberty to wholly disregard, if the reason for doing so seems to 
 me to be sufficient (Signature of the candidate for nomi- 
 nation.) 
 
 Sec. 117f 2 . (Ballot, legislative candidate.) That part of the 
 official primary election ballot which contains the names of 
 candidates for legislative nominations shall have printed thereon 
 immediately following the names of those candidates whose 
 applications include Statement No. 1, the following words, 
 "promises to vote for people's choice for United States senator," 
 and immediately following the name of those candidates whose 
 applications contain Statement No. 2, the following words, 
 "will not promise to vote for people's choice for United States 
 senator." The form of that part of the ballot containing the 
 names for those who are candidates for legislative nomination 
 shall be substantially as follows : — 
 
 For State Senator from th district. Vote for . 
 
 Richard Smith, promises to vote for people's choice for United 
 
 States senator. 
 James Brown, will not promise to vote for people's choice for 
 
 United States senator. 
 William Jones. 
 
 For Representatives from th district. Vote for 
 
 Wilbur Abie, promises to vote for people's choice for United 
 
 States senator. 
 William A. Adams. 
 Frank Alger, will not promise to vote for people's choice for 
 
 United States senator. 
 Elton Ankeny. 
 
 It is obvious that a candidate does not wish to go before the 
 people as refusing to abide by the will of the people, so both 
 candidates sign the pledge before the primary and have to hold 
 to it when they are nominated. The optional provision is 
 merely to get around the constitution.
 
 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 By WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE 
 Cloth i2tno ti.50 
 
 This work may be safely acclaimed as an American novel which takes 
 front rank among the best fiction not only of modern days but of all times. 
 Amid vivid pictures of the growth of the great Middle West, William 
 Allen White, the distinguished journalist and author of numerous widely 
 known short stories, gives us the absorbing career of a remarkable money- 
 maker and his associates. The realism of it, the verisimilitude of his men 
 and women, the accuracy of his description of the conditions that sur- 
 rounded and moulded them, no experienced observer of American life will 
 attempt to deny. Unaffected by an> foreign influence, writing in a simple 
 and straightforward fashion of matters of which he is thoroughly familiar, 
 Mr. White has made "A Certain Rich Man" throb with the vital spirit, 
 good and bad, of America. 
 
 PRESS COMMENTS 
 
 "A tale of great power and dramatic force, and might be called the 
 prose epic of the great altruistic movement it prefigures ; a book that will 
 move the thoughtful and reflecting reader profoundly, and when he has 
 finished he will be quite ready to admit that the great fictional expression 
 of this mighty twentieth century altruistic movement is sure to be some- 
 thing in kind and in degree akin to Mr. White's 'A Certain Rich Man.' " 
 — Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 
 
 "A romance of singular power." — Chicago Tribune. 
 
 "American first, last, and always." — Richmond Times- Despatch. 
 
 " Mr. White has made the nearest approach yet to the great American 
 novel, so long looked for." — The Graphic. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
 
 Other Books by William Allen White 
 
 COURT OF BOYVILLE 
 
 Illustrated Cloth izmo $^-S° 
 
 There are few men in the world who have pictured that strange creation, 
 the Boy, as he actually is. One of these men is Mr. White. His Kansas 
 boys are a delight, and the recollections they will awaken in the mind of 
 any man will cause him to congratulate himself for having read the book. 
 
 IN OUR TOWN 
 
 Illustrated Cloth i2tno $1.50 
 
 Mr. White suggests Barrie more than any other living writer. His new 
 book does for the daily life of a modern Kansas town just what Barrie has 
 done for a Scotch town in "A Window in Thrums." 
 
 " It is ' Boyville ' grown up ; bet; vc because more skilfully and deftly 
 done; riper, because 'Bill' is a bigger boy now than he was five years 
 ago, and more human. No writer to-day handles the small town life to 
 compare with White, and this is the best book he has yet done." — Los 
 Angeles Herald. 
 
 STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS 
 
 Illustrated Cloth ismo $J-5° 
 
 There are hours and days and long years in the lives of men and women 
 wherein strong passions are excited and great human interests are at stake. 
 The ambition for power, the greed for money, the desire to win the game, 
 the hunger for fame, parental love, anger, friendship, hate, and revenge — 
 the primitive passions that move men and the world powerfully — certainly 
 these deserve as important a place in the chronicles of the human animal 
 as does the mating instinct. It is with this idea in mind that Mr. White 
 has set the stories in this volume in the field of American politics, where 
 every human emotion finds free play. 
 
 THE REAL ISSUE 
 
 Cloth i2mo $1^5 
 
 "It pulsates with humor, interest, passionate love, adventures, pathos — 
 every page is woven with threads of human nature, life as we know it, life 
 as it is, and above it all a spirit of righteousness, true piety, and heroic 
 patriotism. These inspire the author's genius and fine literary quality, 
 thrilling the reader with tenderest emotion, and holding to the end his 
 unflagging, absorbing interest." — The Public Ledger, Philadelphia. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
 
 THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 
 
 By HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
 Professor of English at Princeton University ; Hyde Lecturer, University of 
 Paris; Hon. L.L.D., University of Geneva; Hon. F.R.S.L., London. 
 
 Cloth i2tno $J-50 
 
 The basis of this volume is the addresses delivered by Professor van 
 Dyke in Paris as the exchange professor sent by America to the Sorbonne 
 University. The author's wide experience with many distinct aspects of 
 our national life, his great ability as a thinker and writer, and his personal 
 sincerity, all combine to render Professor van Dyke eminently fitted for 
 the important task he has undertaken in this book. To perceive the en- 
 during and valuable elements in the kaleidoscope of the America of to-day, 
 requires a far-seeing eye, whose vision has been trained by long prepara- 
 tion. In this work the fruit of years of application and reflection is clearly 
 apparent — it is undoubtedly the most notable interpretation in years of 
 the real America. 
 
 Professor van Dyke divides his discussion into the following headings : 
 
 The Soul of a People, Self-reliance and the Republic, 
 Fair Play and Democracy, Will Power, Work and Wealth, 
 Common Order and Social Cooperation, Personal Develop- 
 ment and Education, and Self-expression and Literature 
 
 Though his treatment is at all times sympathetic, he has not hesitated 
 to put his finger upon the weak points in our government, and the work 
 will be found quite as entertaining, quite as enlightening to the American 
 nation as it was to the French, where it won the attention and admiration 
 not only of Professor van Dyke's ..nmediate audience, but of the entire 
 country. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 AS A WORLD-POWER 
 
 By ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE, Ph.D. 
 
 Assistant Professor of History in Harvard University 
 
 Cloth i2tno $2.00 
 
 Professor Coolidge's book is based on the lectures which he recently 
 delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, and which attracted wide attention in 
 Europe. It is a critical study of the international position of the United 
 States to-day. He discusses in detail, and with many comparisons, the 
 situation arising from the formation and growth of the United States, the 
 composition of its White population, the Colored elements, the Monroe 
 Doctrine, the Spanish War and the acquisition of colonies, the economic 
 status of the country, the relations of the United States with continental 
 Europe and with England, the relations with Canada and with the coun- 
 tries of Latin America, the presence of the United States in the Pacific 
 and its relations with China and with Japan. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
 
 THE PROMISE OF 
 AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 By HERBERT CROLY 
 
 Goth Gilt top 468 pages $2.00 net 
 
 Mr. Croly opens his admirable treatise with a discus- 
 sion of what the promise of American life is, how it has 
 been realized in the past, and the possibilities of future 
 realization. Then, in order to thoroughly understand 
 present-day problems he goes back to the beginning of 
 things — to the Federalists, the early Republicans, the 
 Democrats and the Whigs, and gradually and consist- 
 ently working his way up through a discussion of slav- 
 ery, its causes, results, and relation to the different 
 parties and to American nationality, he comes, finally, 
 to the contemporary situation 
 
 First of all, he turns his attention to reform and 
 reformers and in this connection presents excellent 
 analyses of Bryan, Hearst, and Roosevelt. Mr. Croly 
 concludes with a detailed critical reconstruction of 
 American political ideas, setting forth a sufficient the- 
 ory in basis, for the programme of a nationalized de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 Altogether the work is a profound study, deep in 
 thought and broad in suggestion. The immense value 
 of the matter to thinking Americans is greatly enhanced 
 by the brilliancy of the style. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 OCT 8 9 1953 
 
 MAR 1 1 1954 
 
 • ; 
 MAY 1 4 195C 
 
 APR " T 
 
 1351 
 
 IUL 1 3 1959 
 
 FormL9 — 15m-10,'48(B1039)444 
 
 5SRL ¥lH ' HAM DF' 
 
 DESK 
 
 MY 
 
 : ) 
 
 
 — 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 ■4V 
 
 
 0$C4 tSto 
 L J373 
 
 ' d66 
 
 ■HFD 
 
 BMntf 
 
 FEB 1 - 4 137 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 T TRT?ARY
 
 J 
 
 \ \y 
 
 ■•' A 4 : 
 
 v^" .i^i 
 
 ,U -i/V <y>p 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 802 082 8