^ «&,. &><&&£'<• THE NEW DEMOCRACY A* THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NBW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE NEW DEMOCRACY AN ESSAY ON CERTAIN POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC TENDENCIES IN THE UNITED STATES BY WALTER E. WEYL, Ph.D. Neto gorfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912 All rights reserved JKjz 4 C2 4-I&4& Copyright, 1912, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1912. : ..:.'«*. •,.' /^tt^\ "^<^*^^'/^^t^^t^^t,^ Narfoaoo $W8$$ J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick and bitter disillusionment. We are no longer the sole guard- ians of the Ark of the Covenant. Europe does not learn at our feet the facile lessons of democracy, but in some respects has become our teacher. Foreign observers describe our institutions with a galling lack of enthusiasm, and vis- itors from monarchical lands applaud their native liberty, while condoling with us over our political " bosses," our railroad " kings/' and our Senate " oligarchies.' ' A swelling \ tide of native criticism overtops each foreign detraction. The shrill political cries which to-day fill the air are in vivid contrast with the stately, sounding phrases of the Declaration of Independence. Men speak (with an exag- geration which is as symptomatic as are the evils it describes) of sensational inequalities of wealth, insane extravagances, strident ostentations ; and, in the same breath, of vast, boss- ridden cities, with wretched slums peopled by all the world, with pauperism, vice, crime, insanity, and degeneration rampant.^/ We disregard, it is claimed, the lives of our workmen. We muster women into dangerous factories. We enroll in our industrial army, by an infinitely cruel conscrip- tion, the anaemic children of the poor. We create hosts of unemployed men, whose sullen tramp ominously echoes through the streets of our relentless cities.^Daily we read of the premature death of American babies; of the ravages of consumption and other "poor men's diseases"; of the scrapping of aged workingmen ; of the jostling of blindly competing races in factory towns; of the breakdown of municipal government ; of the collusion of politicians, petty thieves, and " malefactors of great wealth "; of the sharpen- ing of an irreconcilable class conflict; of the spread of a hunger-born degradation, voicing itself in unpunished crimes of violence / of the spread of a social vice, due in numerous THE DISENCHANTMENT OF AMERICA 3 instances (according to the Committee of Fourteen) not to passion or to corrupt inclination, but to "the force of actual physical want." According to some critics — among whom are conservative men with a statistical bent — American democracy is in process of decay. If we are now scourged with whips, we are, it is claimed, soon to be scourged with scorpions. Our evils, if uncorrected, must grow with the country's growth.. '/If in a century we have increased from seven to ninety millions, we may well increase, in the coming century, to two or three hundreds of millions. In the lifetime of babes already born, the United States may be a Titanic commonwealth bestriding the world; a nation as superior in power to England or Germany as those countries are to Holland or Denmark/'It may be a nation spreading northward to the Polar Seas, southward to the Isthmus, or beyond, and westward to Australia. It may be the greatest single factor, for good or evil, in the destinies of the world. It is this very vastness of our future that gives us pause. It is because in America we are about to play the game of life with such unprecedentedly enormous stakes that we are at last taking thought of the fearful chances of ill skill or ill luck. If to-day we have individual fortunes of four or five hundreds of millions, whereas in Washington's day we had not a single millionaire, how overwhelming may not be our fortunes in the year 2000, how overbearing may not be the pressure of poverty upon our hundreds of millions of citizens. Already our free lands are gone, our cheap food is in danger. Soon our high wages may be threatened. It is possible to con- ceive of a progressive deterioration accompanying an increase in population. We have no guarantee that prosperity, intel- ligence, discontent, and democracy will be our portion. To-day, more than ever before in American history, dire prophecies gain credence. Some foretell the dissolution of the Republic and the rise under democratic forms of an 4 THE NEW DEMOCRACY absolutist empire, of a malevolent or " benevolent feudalism" of business princes. Others predict a day of " civil war, immense bloodshed, and eventually military discipline of the severest type." Grave men hope or fear a sudden destructive cataclysm, in which the ponderous pillars of our society will fall upon a blind and wretched people. Revolutionary and reactionary agitators are alike disil- lusioned. They no longer place their faith upon our tra- ditional democracy. Even the mass of men, — that experimental, inventive, but curiously conservative group of average Americans, — though voting instinctively, is beginning to feel that in es- sential respects the nation " conceived in liberty" has not borne its expected fruits. No one believes after this cen- tury of progress that the children of America are endowed with equal opportunities of life, health, education, and fruc- tifying leisure, nor that success depends solely upon individ- ual ^deserts. The " unalienable rights" have not availed against unemployment or the competition of the stronger. Our liberty is not yet absolute nor universally beneficent; our right to bear arms, our right to trial by jury, our rights of free speech and free assembly have been sensibly abridged. The slums are here; they cannot be conjured away by any spell of our old democracy.// Disenchanted with the glorious large promises of '76, we are even, like our early European visitors^beginning to ascribe all evils to political institutions, /^nd occasionally the unacknowledged thought arises: " Is democracy after all a failure ? Is not the bureau- cratic efficiency of Prussia as good as the democratic laxness and corruption of Pennsylvania ? A Are not progress, honesty, security better than the deceptive ' unalienable rights ' ? Does democracy pay ? 7^ y It is in this moment of misgiving, when men are beginning to doubt the all-efficiency of our old-time democracy, that a new democracy is born. It is a new spirit, critical, concrete, — — v THE DISENCHANTMENT OF AMERICA 5 insurge nt. A clear-eyed discontent is abroad in the la nd. There is a low-voiced, earnest questioning. There is a not unreverential breaking of the tablets of tradition. It is not merely the specific insurgent movement in Con- gress which occupies men's minds. That is but a symptom, but one of a hundred symptoms, of a far broader, subtler, and more general movement of revolt. Men in the Middle West, in the Far West, in the East and South ; men in the factory and on the farm ; men, and also women, — are looking at America with new eyes, as though it were the morning of the first day. They are using old words in strange, new senses; they are appealing to old moralities in behalf of strange, new doctrines. It is not all "talk" of congressmen, for the man who is represented is more insurgent than the man who represents him. There are millions of insurgents who have never been to Washington. The new spirit is not yet self-conscious, understand its own implications, its own alignments its own oppositions. It does not quite know whether to look backward or forward. It is still inchoate. It is still negative. Protestantism, too, was at first protesting, insurgent, negative, but Protestantism to-day is positive, plenary, and protested against. So our nascent, insurgent, still unfolded democracy, which unites many men in a common hostility to certain broad economic and political developments, is now passing over to a definite constructive program. It is becoming positive through force and circumscription of its own negations. "~"V As it becomes positive the new spirit seeks to explain it- self, and in so doing to understand itself. It seeks to test its motives and ideals in their relation to American history and conditions. Is our new democracy merely the old democ- racy in a new coat ? Is it a return to the past or a turning from the past ? Is it an imported creed or a belief of native It does notV ignments, GrV^ 6 THE NEW DEMOCRACY growth ? Is it a high-hung Utopia or an attainable end ? Is it a destruction, or a fulfillment, of the fundamental law of American development? Whence does it come? Whither does it lead ? What is it and what is it to be ? What does it mean, for better or worse, to the common run of us ? CHAPTER II /the SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 // WHEN the course of events is not to our liking, and we long for something that we do not have, our most in- stinctive argument is an appeal to a former golden age. We claim that we once had this property, this right, or this de- mocracy, which in later evil days has been wrongfully taken from us. Applied to America, this method of thinking presupposes an earlier era of native, full-blown democracy, when men were free and equal, with universal, uncontested political and civil rights. The period of this imagined era is vaguely placed at the dates of the Declaration of Independence and of the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Filled with a~7 zeal for historical orthodoxy, we plead vehemently for/ the restoration of our one-time equalities and freedoms. \ Tacitly we assume that the broad and responsible democracy, I for which we are now striving, once existed. ^— -* What, however, are the facts ? To what extent were the democratic ideals of to-day embodied in the laws of a cen- tury ago? What solutions does the wisdom of our ances- tors offer to the perplexing problems of their descendants? What, in short, was our original heritage of democracy and how have we added to or taken from it ? At the time of the Declaration, as during the preceding one hundred and fifty years, there existed in New England, and elsewhere in America, a certain measure of self-rule. The Puritans were by no means ardent democrats, their government, compounded of English and Hebrew tradition, inclining rather to theocracy. The democratic spirit, how- 7 8 THE NEW DEMOCRACY ever, found expression in the town meeting, in which the good citizens came together to build the road, provide for the school, and pass laws against scolds and Sabbath-breakers. It was a primitive, unrepresentative democracy in a group small, simple, and homogeneous. It differed widely from the larger colonial, and later from the State and national governments, by which the township was subsequently to be overshadowed. It was a democracy of poverty, — of men of small means, — and herein also it differed from modern democracies of wealth, in which enormous fortunes and their getting and keeping involve the clash of gigantic interests. The political problems of the formative days of Hamilton and Jefferson cannot be likened to those of to-day. Since Washington's inauguration our population has increased twenty-three fold and our national wealth probably over one hundred fold, while the whole structure of society has been metamorphosed by steam, electricity, railroad, and telegraph. When we realize how the poor, simple, and homo- geneous community of the eighteenth century has evolved into our present wealthy, complex, and differentiated society, we need not wonder that we have failed to inherit spontane- ously the supposed democratic Utopia of the Declaration. A perfect democracy conceived in 1776 and adapted to those days would not have fitted comfortably upon the men of 1911. In reality the democracy of 1776 was by no means perfect. The Declaration of Independence was not an organic law, but an appeal — a very special and adroit appeal — to the " natural right" of revolution. It was a beautiful ideal, as wonderfully poised in mid-air as is to-day the golden rule among the thrice-armed nations of Europe. The average American was not a true believer in its doctrines. The " bet- ter classes," tainted with an interested loyalty to King George, could not abide rebels, petitioners, and " agitators," and among the signers were many conservative men who THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776, 9 feared "too much democracy/' though they saw the advan- tage of issuing a "platform/' and of hanging together to avoid "hanging separately." Although a revolt against despotism swept through the land ; although the new State constitutions, conceived in the diluted spirit of the Declaration, breathed a distrust of gov- ernors, legislators, and judges, — nevertheless a democracy, in the sense of our present hopes, did not exist in the emanci- pated colonies, < Of the "free and equal" men of 1776, one sixth were chattel slaves. These poor blacks, largely native Americans, were speechless and voteless, were bought and sold, were mortgaged and flogged. Many whites, under the names redemptioners and indentured servants, were also limited in their civil rights, being bound to service and liable to harsh and cruel treatment. A large proportion of adult, white, free males were disfranchised. iNew Hampshire limited the suffrage to Protestant taxpayers ; South Caro- lina, to free white men, believing in God, Heaven, and Hell, with a freehold of fifty acres, or a town lot, or who had paid a considerable tax. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, Mary- land, Virginia, North Carolina, and New York the right to vote was based on the ownership of property (usually real estate) or upon the payment of equivalent taxes. In New Jersey no one could vote unless possessed of real estate to the value of fifty pounds. The qualifications for office were even more excluding. The right to be elected to the Lower House was usually denied to all except Christians (or Protestants) of means. In Delaware the candidate for office was obliged to "profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost, one God blessed evermore/' and to "acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, to be given by divine inspiration." 1 In South Carolina no man 1 See John Bach McMaster, "The Acquisition of the Political, Social, and Industrial Rights of Man in America." (Cleveland, 1903.) 10 THE NEW DEMOCRACY could be elected to the Lower House unless he owned five hundred acres and ten negro slaves, or real estate worth 150 pounds sterling and clear of all debt. The qualifications for the Upper House, and especially for governor, were still higher. A governor of South Carolina had to be possessed of ten thousand pounds, a property qualification comparable with that of a million dollars or more for the present-day governors of New York or Illinois. Generally speaking, none but a rich or at least well-to-do Christian was eligible to the office of governor. The will of the people, aborted by a restricted suffrage, was completely nullified by the " rotten politics" of the time. The founders of the Republic, be it remembered, were not quiet old gentlemen in stocks, living honorable and pro- phetic lives for the uplifting of us, their putative descendants. They were a very human lot of people who, liking to win, were not overnice as to means. "In filibustering and gerry- mandering," writes Professor McMaster, "in stealing gov- ernorships and legislatures, in using force at the polls, in colo- nizing and in distributing patronage to whom patronage is due, in all the frauds and tricks that go to make up the worst form of practical politics, the men who founded our State and national governments were always our equals, and often our masters." By such devices the balance of power under the Revolu- tionary constitutions was held in the hands of the "gentle- men," and kept away from those whom John Adams styled the "simple-men." /In most States the mass of the people v/ were compelled to accept a subordinate position. //Unrepre- sented by government, press, or public opinion, largely illit- erate and comparatively isolated, they were no match for the able, educated, and often unscrupulous gentlemen who seized political power and the fruits and spoils thereof, f Sharp social distinctions remained. What equality existed was due to a level of poverty, a uniform hard striving, and THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 11 a most unwelcome simple living. On the Appalachian frontier this rude equality of poor men was most clearly exemplified, but in the East, where were the " well-born" and the " opulent," vestiges of aristocratic gradations lin- gered. The line between the scholarly or sporting Virginia burgess and the poor white of his district, or between the Madeira-drinking Dutch landlord of Albany and his neigh- boring shiftless farmer, was as sharp as that to-day between railroad president and railroad engineer. You could not mistake a journeyman shoemaker for his Excellency the Governor. The ill-clad, ill-conditioned, foul-mouthed mobs of the little cities delighted to bespatter mud upon the small clothes and silver-buckled shoes of the gentleman, who re- sponded with a deep scorn for the " low-born" rascals. Nor did the economic conditions reflect the freedom and equality which were the American's inalienable rights. True, there was a plenitude of cheap land, offering itself as an alternative to wage labor; but the industrial organization of the revolted colonies was ineffective, commerce was slow and cautious, and the rude labor of even a hard-working farmer produced nothing but an overabundant supply of simple and unvaried food and clothing. As for the landless laborer, he toiled from sun to sun for a wage lower than that to-day earned by a newly arrived Hungarian immigrant. Such a Revolutionary toiler could not be sure when or in what form his wages would be paid, or indeed, whether they would be paid at all ; while, if he fell into debt for a few shillings, he might be cast into a reeking, vermin-infested jail, to fight with half-naked male and female prisoners for the retention of his clothes. To keep the poor among our free and equal forefathers in their place, a barbarous criminal law, inherited from seven- teenth century England, was invoked. Not only was im- prisonment for debt universal, but attacks upon property were repelled with savage severity. In Maryland a thief 12 THE NEW DEMOCRACY was branded with a T on his left hand, and the rogue or vagabond — the unemployed man — with an R on his shoulder. The sovereign commonwealth of New Hampshire branded burglars on the hand, or, if the crime was committed on Sunday, on the forehead; while in Virginia all "deceitful bakers, dishonest cooks, cheating fishermen, careless fish dressers" (all of them " simple-men ' ') were ordered to lose their ears. In Virginia it was a capital crime to obtain goods or money under false pretenses. Branding, whipping, duck- ing, the cropping of ears, the pillory, and the stock were ordi- nary punishments for vulgar rogues. A man could be hanged in Pennsylvania in 1776 on a first conviction for any of twenty crimes; in Virginia twenty-seven crimes were pun- ishable by death. The law fell with especial severity upon the unrepresented, voiceless, and often uneducated "simple- men/' who feared the debtor's prison as they feared the omnipresent pillory and lash, or the cloth P which the un- fortunate pauper and his wife and children were obliged to wear upon the sleeve. Politically, industrially, socially, the " simple-man' ' was subordinate, and over this extremely imperfect democracy hung the black cloud of an aristocratic South, with its preponderating population and its wealth based upon the enforced labor of benighted negroes. // America in 1776 was not a democracy. It was not 'even a democracy on paper. 1 It was at best a shadow- democracy. // Nor was the substance of democracy conferred by the federal Constitution. If our modern ideal of democracy does not lead back to the noble eloquence of the Declaration, still less does it revert to the federal Constitution, as it 1 Of democracies on paper, Mexico is an admirable example. Our sister republic imitates the forms, rites, and solemn-farcical pretenses of democracy. No one, by merely looking at her unwinking constitution, could surmise that the government is autocratic, or that peon slaves toil on the sisal grass plantations of Yucatan. The American Constitution, on the other hand, openly and unblushingly avowed slavery. THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 13 issued, in 1787, fresh from the Philadelphia Convention. Our newer democracy demands, not that the people forever conform to a rigid, hard-changing Constitution, but that the Constitution change to conform to the people. The Constitution of the United States is the political wisdom of dead America. So intimately has this Constitution been bound up with our dearest national ideals and with our very sense of na- tional unity/so many have been the gentle traditions which have clustered about this venerable document^ that one hesi- tates to apply to it the ordinary canons of political criticism. For over a century we have piously exclaimed that our Con- stitution is the last and noblest expression of democracy. /But, in^ truth, the Constitution is not democratic. It was, in intention, and is, in essence, undemocratic. It was con- ceived in a violent distrust of the common people, and was dedicated to the principle that " the minority of the opulent" must be protected from American sans-culottes. There was perhaps some excuse for a reactionary docu- ment. Things were in a bad way. Thirteen free and very independent States were issuing paper money and were tax- ing each other's commerce. The central government, under the Articles of Confederation, maintained a precarious and contemptible existence. The domestic debt was not worth a continental, and the interest on the foreign debt (which was falling due) was regularly defaulted. England and Spain were hemming in the disorganized States on north, west, and south. National preservation was all-important, and the Constitution paid more heed to this problem than to the " unalienable rights" of men. Some of the men who drew up the instrument frankly pre- ferred a king, and the chief spirit of them all, the brilliant Alexander Hamilton, desired a life-elected president with an absolute veto on all legislation, appointing governors with absolute vetoes over all State laws. That such an abhorrent \ 14 THE NEW DEMOCRACY ideal should have been for a moment entertained indicates the unlimited contempt in which the greatest political leaders of the day held the raw and vociferous American democracy. No king was set to rule over America. But the Constitu- tion, as presented by the Convention, was more subtly sub- versive of the popular interest than might have been a dozen Georges. The House of Representatives was conceived to be the sole popular branch of the new government, but even in the choice of this body no provision was made for an ex- tension of the then restricted suffrage. The senators, indi- rectly elected for long terms and without reference to the population of their districts, were legislators likely to be largely free from popular control. The power and dignity of the Senate were correspondingly augmented. The Presi- dent by his indirect election (for it was not anticipated that presidential electors would accept instructions) was thought to be even farther removed from the unstable and easily be- guiled people, and the Chief Executive was accordingly granted a qualified veto on Congress and enormous powers in peace and war. All these checks upon a supposedly democratic House were reenforced by what in practice is an absolute veto in- hering in the Supreme Court. This veto was intended to enable a small body of jurists, non-elected, but appointed for life by an indirectly elected President and an indirectly elected Senate, to set aside through a nullifying interpreta- tion or upon the ground of unconstitutionality any federal law, approved by any majority, as well as any State law or State constitution. The supposedly undemocratic federal government was thus to be protected from ebullitions of the democratic spirit in the States and the United States. Finally the altering of the Constitution was surrounded with almost insuperable difficulties, so that to-day less than one fortieth of the voters could conceivably frustrate the wish for amendment of thirty-nine fortieths. This threw THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 15 the real power of amendment into the hands of the interpret- ing body, the same Supreme Court, intended by its composi- tion and the manner of choice and the life tenure of its members to be the most remote of all governmental agencies from the operation of popular control. Popular rights were presumably, for all time, bottled up. The greatest merit — and the greatest defect — of the Constitution is that it has survived. It might be well if the ^American people would recast their Constitution every generation. 1 We would assuredly do better in 1911 with a twentieth century organic law than with an almost unchange- able constitution, which antedated the railroad, the steam- boat, and the French Revolution, and was contemporary with George the Third, Marie Antoinette, and flintlock mus- kets. In the early days, however, when the States were jeal- ous, exigent, and eternally overvigilant, any bond of union, if only strong enough, was good. M)ur eighteenth century Constitution was a marvel of judicious compromises and wise evasions, and its ratification was a long step forward towards political autonomy. // This ratification was not a popular one, for the Constitu- tion was never fairly presented for adoption to the people, but was accepted by a small minority during a reactionary year in a fear of foreign aggression and domestic anarchy. Even many who voted for the adoption of the Constitution were opposed to its principles, but by cajolery, logrolling, and questionable tactics the ratification was finally secured. The far-seeing leaders recognized that the Constitution was necessary. With a sop therefore to a jealous people in the form of the first ten amendments, guaranteeing civil and political rights, the dominating, intelligent minority of Americans decided to go ahead. 1 Jefferson, who believed that each generation has a right to formulate its own organic law, advocated a policy of revising constitutions every nineteen years. In this way "the consent of the governed" could be periodically obtained. [6 J THE NEW DEMOCRACY iat the Constitution has worked so well and compara- tively so democratically is due, less to its intrinsic merits, or to the genius of Hamilton and Madison, than to the modera- tion and political tolerance of succeeding generations of Americans, and to a subsequent rising tide of democracy which has liberalized our organic law, overborne it, or evaded The almost direct election of the President, the enor- mous influence of political parties and of public opinion, the widening of the suffrage, the increasingly direct election of sen- ators, are democratic features which were unpredicted, and would have been undesired, by the authors of the document. The new government based upon the Constitution fell into the hands of the conservative class. By 1789 thousands of wealthy loyalists, who had fled in 1775, were reinstated in public esteem, and these men, as well as other "leading citizens,' ' had scant sympathy for democratic vagaries and demagogic vaporings. The Federalists, who had made them- selves responsible for the Constitution, realized that the efficiency of a political instrument depends upon the minds which interpret and the hands which administer it. It was in this spirit that they secured control of the new govern- ment. The formative American government thus came to be marked with the stamp of Hamilton, Adams, and, later, of John Marshall, men who had faith in the union of the States, but not in the people who formed their citizenry. These leaders recognized that it was necessary to attach to the nascent federal government the interested loyalty of the moneyed classes, which was done through the levying of a mildly protective tariff, the creation of a national bank, and the assumption of the State debts. Through the strengthening and astute manning of the Supreme Court, they created checks upon the people and upon the State governments, while they wisely held aloof from the embraces of revolutionary France and tried to repress internal dis- affection by the ill-advised Alien and Sedition Laws. THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 17 The democratic spirit, however, was growing. A few months after the inauguration of President Washington, a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille, and the great French Revolution was launched. When Citizen Genet arrived in America, he found many thousands sympa- thetic to the new democratic doctrines. The Declaration of Independence was also bearing fruit. Suffrage was being extended in the several States; property and religious quali- fications were being lessened or removed ; the limitation of officeholding to men of wealth was made less stringent; and the penal law and the conduct of prisons were somewhat humanized. In 1800, the " Jacobin" and " leveller," Thomas Jefferson, was elected President, and by 1814, after the dis- astrous Hartford Convention, the influence of the Federal party was forever gone. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the prog- ress away from the evil old conditions was even more rapid. The little cities were growing, and the citizens, especially the Journeymen workingmen who were forming unions, had no respect for suffrage qualifications based on the ownership of farms. The city poor were asking for public — not pauper — schools, for the right to strike, for the cessation of special privileges, for a mechanic's lien law, and for that most revo- lutionary of all programs, the abolition of imprisonment for debt. On the westward-moving border of the States, also, a new and iconoclastic spirit, born of the wilderness, began to arise. In the conflict with nature all strong men were equal; to pass the Appalachians, a social convention had needs be hardy. The pioneer, who blazed a trail through the primitive forest, who fought with Hull at Detroit or Jackson at New Orleans, who drank "hard cider" with Tippecanoe, had no remembrance of pre-Revolutionary gentlemen and no respect for the old-fashioned school of statesmen. te / THE NEW DEMOCRACY The wave of a new democracy — intensely individualistic, \ intensely confident, aggressive, dogmatic — passed east over the mountains from Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee into New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The new crude democratic movement, fed on a number of social and political reforms, culminated in the electoral victory of 1828. Ja ckson was made President, a demo cratic ideal was fixed upon^Snerica, political traditions were unsettled, and the door was opened to all manner of revolutionary changes, good and ba d. Witt the inauguration of this popular hero in 1829 began the spoils system, the short tenure of office, the popular boss, and the fresh and wholesale corruption of parties. The suf- frage was still further extended and the congressional caucus which had formerly nominated presidential candidates gave way to the theoretically more democratic, but in prac- tice equally unrepresentative, national convention. The prayers to the " gentleman" leaders of public opinion died away, and louder appeals were made to the unquestioned sovereignty of an imperious people. Industrial and social changes also took place. The opportunities of workingmen were widened, and their rights were affirmed and defended. A wave of educational reform along democratic lines swept over the country, and abuses of many kinds, grown old in America or torn from feudal settings in Europe, were at- tacked and abolished. The people were supreme. A tur- bulent army of camp followers and spoilsmen accompanied Jackson in his invasion of Washington. Democracy was attained. It was a crude nation which believed that it had attained democracy, a nation still poor, but little instructed, with raw impulses which might lead it anywhere. It was a dispersed, atomic nation; a nation of " queer/ inquisitive folk; a nation boasting of the armor it was to put on. It was a nation loudly protesting against all artificial distinctions; THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 19 a nation in which the servant was the respected and con- descending "help," and the policeman, letter carrier, and stagedriver equal and aggressive citizens, proudly refusing to wear uniforms or other badges of servitude. It was a nation in which the doctor or lawyer cultivated his farm, and the factory girl might play the piano and write for a magazine. It was a nation hopefully anticipating the immi- nent downfall of the monarchs of "effete Europe" ; a nation devoutly confident that the ultimate sanction of Divine Providence had been uniquely reserved for the ideally per- fect American Commonwealth. It was a nation shamed by filthy prisons, barbarous penal laws, imprisonment for debt, and ill-kept cities. It was a nation cursed with slavery. The evil, like the good, of the Jacksonian era is still with us, and only slowly are we freeing our larger, newer democ- racy from the trammels placed upon it by the raw, crude democratic movement of that day. But with all its defects, the democracy of the America of 1829 was far in advance of that of the contemporaneous world. Europe was still lying in the slough of reaction, following the Revolution and Napoleon. In England George the Fourth ruled a slum- bering nation, Catholic Emancipation was just being granted, the Reform Bill had not been passed, the "rotten boroughs" sent up their members to an aristocratic Parliament, and the hand of a noble class lay heavy upon the land. In France the Revolution of 1830, which was to turn over the nation from the Bourbon Charles X to the bourgeois monarch Louis Philippe, had not yet occurred. Prussia, Austria, Russia, Spain, were in the grasp of absolutist regimes. The world's hope of democracy seemed to lie to the west of the ocean. Two years later, Alexis de Tocqueville, the philosophic student of popular government, conceived this land as "the most democratic country on the face of the earth." In 20 ) THE NEW DEMOCRACY "America the people had a sure foot on the ladder of freedom. Again and again De Tocqueville speaks of our equality of political rights, of property, of education, of opportunity. Often he speaks of the unquestioned sovereignty of the people, of the exclusion or voluntary retirement of aristo- crats. The inevitable rule of the masses, which De Tocque- ville everywhere foresaw, was to be studied in the towns of New England, on the frontier of Illinois, in the halls of Congress. The most youthful nation would teach its elders the lessons of popular government. A child would lead them. To-day the tables are turned. America no longer teaches democracy to an expectant world, but herself goes to school to Europe and Australia. Our ballot laws come from a na- tion younger than ourselves; our students of political and industrial democracy repair to the antipodes, to England, Belgium, France, to semi-feudal Germany. Politically, as otherwise, we have made progress, but we are no longer so supremely confident that the men of 1787 could adequately foresee and rightly predestine the lives of the men of 1911. We are beset by bewildering new problems ; by portentous, unexpected versions of old problems ; by stubborn, staring facts, irreconcilable with our old optimism; by evil, in- credible conditions, the impossible offspring of our early hopes. Where we have planted the good, the ill has sprung up; where we have striven for equality, we have achieved inequality. Why have the promises of the rash young democracy of \l829 remained unfulfilled? Why has the tortoise Europe outdistanced the hare?/ I There are several reasons. First, we believed that we ^already had democracy. To the early Americans, democ- "* /racy was something negative, an absence of kings, of nobles, of political oppression, of taxation without representation. It was something which, having, they need not worry about, THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 like their wives, whom they loved but no longer courted. It was an individualistic democracy — not a democracy adapted to the steam engine, the big factory, the great city and the social relations corresponding to a complex, closely / knit industrial system. A second reason was slavery. From 1787 slavery was an acute national problem; from 1820 to 1863 it was the problem of America. To have attained a plenary, socialized democracy, we should have been obliged to turn all our national thought upon the problems of the distribution of wealth, the effectuation of the popular will in government, and the creation of a national intelligence and a national will to cope with these problems. Such a concentration of our national thought was impossible during the slavery struggle. The South fought desperately in Congress and, later, on the field of battle for the maintenance and exten- sion of its peculiar institution, as a man fights for a drug to which he has become subject. The most democratic nation in the world was distraught over the question of the exten- sion of slavery at a time when the politically less advanced nations of western Europe were agreed that slavery and even serfdom were immoral, uneconomical, and obsolete. A still more formidable obstacle lay between America and the democracy to which we to-day aspire. In the early thirties, when De Tocqueville was studying our institutions so sympathetically, America stood at the parting of the ways. She had to choose between the attainment and mocPv ern adaptation of the rights of men and the conquest of the \ continent; between immediate democracy and material progress; between the Declaration of Independence and/ " manifest destiny." It was not a conscious choice; few determinations of great masses of men are. It was rather a blind inclining to a great task, a blind fulfillment of the supreme need of the epoch. Unless the continent were subjugated by the na- 22 / THE NEW DEMOCRACY tion; unless the far distant corners of the Republic were united by road and canal, by railroad and telegraph; unless men and goods could pass freely from Atlantic to Pacific and from Rio Grande to Lakes Superior and Michigan ; unless America were united, cemented, and fused, — the Republic and all its idols would perish. Theoretically America might have abjured Louisiana, foregone Florida, refrained from the Mexican foray, and stayed at home and developed her democracy. Actually she was forced outward.// The press- ing need of America was not liberty, equality, arid fraternity, nor yet a perfected and socialized democracy, but the con- quest of the continent, the fashioning of a man to conquer it, and the creation of a state which would aid, or at least not hinder, the conquest// The subjugation of this continent from the Appalachians td the American Desert, and beyond, and the search for the wealth which was its embodiment, must set its stamp upon the acquisitive, imaginative, and starkly individualistic American ; it must set its stamp upon the feeble, faltering, starkly individualistic state. The na- tion was compelled to develop along lines hostile to the high- est political evolution. It was compelled to sacrifice a large measure of immediate progress in democracy in order that the material substratum might be provided upon which eventually a fuller, deeper, nation-wide democracy could be /reared. It was perhaps a way about — an instinctive detour. Thus it came about that America, in 1831 the leader in democracy, gave up its leadership to attempt another task. The immediate task before America, the frontiersman oi civilization, was not democracy, but the Conquest of the ^ \ JContinent. w CHAPTER III THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT THE conquest of the wide-stretching continent lying to the west of the Appalachians, gave to American development a tendency adverse from the evolution of J a socialized democracy. It made America atomic. Its/ led automatically to a loose political coherence and to a structureless economic system. The trust, the hundred- millionaire, and the slum were latent in the land which the American people in their first century of freedom were to subjugate. That land was one of the most magnificent portions of a fertile world. The immense domain stretched from Appa- lachians to Pacific, with broad, deep rivers, with a chain of fresh-water lakes unique in the world, and with ex- haustless supplies of water power. The varied climate was adapted to all the purposes of civilization; the soil was fertile beyond the experience of European cultivators. A million square miles of forest, with treasures of pine, oak, hickory, and ash, stretched like a shoreless sea before the eyes of the early settlers. In those forests and on the plains beyond were numberless deer, buffalo, mountain sheep, and fur-bearing animals, while overhead passed clouds of pigeons, turkeys, geese, and quail ; and in the seas, lakes, and rivers were myriads of edible fishes. Land, sea and sky, forest and prairie, offered seemingly exhaust- less supplies to the scattered millions of early Americans. Beneath the deserts of forest and prairie lay an equal bounty. There were hundreds of thousands of square miles of deposits of coal and iron. In gold, silver, lead, 23 24 THE NEW DEMOCRACY zinc, in building stone, phosphates, and salt, in many other minerals and metals, the country abounded. These buried treasures were not for the unseeing eyes of the first gener- ations. It was the forest which fed and warmed and housed them, which sheltered them from the Indians, and held out its constant lure. In grandeur the march of the pioneers into the preg- nant forest compares with those multitudinous outpour- ings of northern Barbarians which overturned Rome. The movement was peaceful, continuous, resistless. Wher- ever the pioneer pressed, boundaries gave way. Napoleon sold a magnificent empire to the young Republic, and vast territories were stolen from feeble and distracted Mexico. Not until it reached the impassable ocean did the west- ward movement stop. To-day the peaceful conquest moves northwest into the wheat lands of Saskatchewan. It is all the same process, the overflow of a vigorous, fertile race into an empty, fertile land. It was this emptiness of the wide land which impressed upon the new nation its essentially industrial character. Spain became martial through eight centuries of warfare against the Moors ; the ancient Jews became militant because, to win the Promised Land, they were forced to slay root and branch. To the Americans such warlike qualities were not essential. A few hundred thousand Indians could not withstand the prolific invaders. The aborigines were not so much conquered as overawed. They were literally crowded out by men who, themselves waste- ful, yet made a better use of the land. The plow, not the rifle, vanquished the Indian. We must pause to survey this conquest of the continent because it has entrained a series of developments which still vitally affect American life. To-day we cannot tear down a slum, regulate a corporation, or establish a national educational system, we cannot attack either industrial t l k THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT oligarchy or political corruption, without coming into con- tact with the economic, political, and psychological after effects of the conquest. What our land is, what our state is, what we are, our present problems and our present hopes, are largely traceable to the hasty occupation of the con- tinent, and to the rapid material development of the nation which the conquest visualized. What was the impelling cause of this vast, harmonious movement? What inspired the men who built the new West? It is naive to believe that all these men were inspired by a concerted desire to work out a national destiny. Their motive was more personal. Nor may we ascribe the move- ment to a disinterested love of adventure. Adventure means money. Ordinary men do not break home ties, go forth into a trackless wild or into a new, crude community, do not put their lives, still less their permanent comfort, to the touch without hope of money, gold, farms, a free economic life. The exceptions do not disprove the rule. The great mi grations of history have been economic. In the business, labor, and property conditions of the East of America, as in the unparalleled offerings of the West, we must seek the cause of the Western movement. It might seem that the vast territory east of the Appala- chians should have sufficed for the needs of its sparse popu- lations. In 1790 there were far fewer people in all the United States than in New York City to-day; in 1820 the whole population, white, red, and black, on both sides of the mountains was but little greater than the present population of New York State. Had the early Americans been engaged in manufacturing, commerce, and intensive agriculture, there would have been little apparent incentive to a westward migration. Such were not the conditions. By an adverse policy of the British government, manufacturing had been restricted 26 THE NEW DEMOCRACY during the colonial period, and after 1815 it was again injured by the competition of the better equipped Eng- lish factories. Farming, in America, even according to the then European standards, was superficial and ineffectual. The tools were rude; the plow was essentially that which Herodotus had seen in Egypt. The farmers were neither ambitious nor scientific. The one-crop system prevailed, fertilizers were unused, and the land was subjected to the most exhausting tillage. An ineffectual national produc- tion and a rapidly increasing population 1 forced increasing numbers of Americans across the mountains. So long as commerce offered an alternative, Americans were loath to move westward. A few years after Wash- ington's inauguration, Europe became embroiled in a series of wars which lasted a generation. The slaughter in the East was a golden opportunity to the poor Western Re- public. America turned its back upon the forest and ex- panded toward the sea. She became the audacious blockade- runner, the shrewd trader, who stuck to business while competitors quarreled. American fleets filled the seas, scattered the Mediterranean pirates, carried food to Eng- land, ministered to Bonaparte, and engaged in the lucra- tive, horrific slave trade. Finally warring England and France joined hands to assail our rising commerce. The maritime monopoly of America ceased. Our ships lay idle in the harbors, and grass grew in the Salem streets. 2 Thereafter the undivided energies of Americans turned westward. The cession of Louisiana in 1803 had brought under the American flag distant lands less known than are to-day the hiddenmost recesses of Central Africa. Into 1 Prior to the flood of immigration which began in 1820, the white popu- lation was doubling every twenty-two or twenty-three years, and the slave population was growing almost as rapidly. * American commerce received so great a setback through the French and English policies, the American Embargo, and the War of 1812, that the tonnage of American vessels was less in 1830 than in 1800. THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 27 the Western territory there poured, after 1815, increasing numbers of hardy adventurers. Turnpikes were built between the ocean and the Appalachians. The steam- boat, launched on the Hudson, was transported to the Western rivers, and carried passengers from Pittsburg and Cincinnati to St. Louis and New Orleans. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 connected the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean, while in the early years of the fourth decade the newly invented railroads began to open up lands inaccessible by water. The forests of the North- west Territory went down before ax and pyre. Clear- ings were made, towns grew up, and Territories, and later States, were formed. The population of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin increased from 50,000 in 1800 to 3,000,000 in 1840. The Appalachian barrier had been turned. The country lay open to the Rockies. The building of the West was hastened by the wasting of the East. Labor being scarce and land plenty, it seemed extravagant not to waste. Beyond his tumble-down fences the Eastern cultivator saw other boundless farms. The New Englander profitably ruined his land and migrated to Ohio and Illinois. The Georgian moved with the spoils of his ravished acres to the cheaper and more fertile acres of Alabama and Mississippi. In the South both waste and migration were incited by the ignorance, apathy, and mo- bility of the slave. The Southern planter transported his valuable human property easily and cheaply, and these transitions carried slavery and cotton beyond the Missis- sippi. The impact of "King Cotton " drove the Mexi- cans across the Rio Grande, and Texas and Arkansas were settled, while in many parts of the Southeast decayed buildings and overgrown lands were all that remained of once prosperous plantations. The center of population moved westward. The Southwest, shipping its one "pay- crop," cotton, to Liverpool and New York, drew its corn ,/th 28 THE NEW DEMOCRACY and bacon from the Northwest, which in turn bought plows, railroad tracks, and other manufactured products from the East. The North Atlantic and Middle States went over to manufacturing; the nation's mineral re- sources began to be tapped; and the country, about the year 1840, emerged from its former poverty and sparse- ness of population into an era of exuberant prosperity. To this prosperity and to the almost intentionally waste- 1 exploitation of resources, two new factors contributed, the railroad and migration. The railroad, bringing the virgin farm of the West nearer to the wasteful farmer of the East, removed the last penalty from the murdering of the soil. The most adventurous and resilient among Americans, men who in still earlier days would have en- gaged in whaling or the desperate fur trade, turned their energies into the construction of railways. Against the urgent cry for transportation, voiced by the upgrow- ing nation, nothing could stand. Peculation, speculation, force, fraud, genius, and courage, — all went into the new lines. Tracks were laid upon the smooth prairie into a land uninhabited. The freight and passengers built the road that carried them. Wooden bridges, desperately flimsy, made subsequent iron bridges possible, as iron bridges later paid for steel and stone bridges. Where the iron rail went, pioneer and settler followed, and cities — strident boom towns, born of an insane optimism — sprang up in swamps and forests. The railroads, like their chil- dren, the new communities, were a law unto themselves. The savage little lines, fighting for life with tooth and claw, running anywhere and everywhere, cutting, rebating, over- charging, were gradually forced into bigger combinations of continuous railroad, which also cut, and rebated, and over- charged, and fought tooth and claw. Parallel " strike' ' lines arose, and the struggle for money and land waxed fiercer and fiercer; while pregnant America poured forth ever new THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 29 torrents of wealth, and men wasted and garnered and laughed and fought, as the continent was conquered. While the American pioneers were crossing the first range of mountains, a reserve army was moving to their assistance from the fecund lands of western Europe. These men too were adventurers, giving up home and friends for money, food, and a job. The voyage was hard. Suc- cess depended upon an ability to survive in the ruthless, fertile struggle of American life. From 1820 on, immi- gration grew rapidly, and after the bad crops of the late forties, the Irish Famine of 1846, and the unsuccess- ful German revolution of 1848, millions of men poured into the Western Republic. 1 The cities, which were grow- ing up like weeds, attracted the plastic Irishman, while the Germans swept over the new lands of the West. Here, beyond the Wabash, the immigrants found an unforested prairie, where, though wood and water often lacked, prog- ress was easier. The " prairie breaker/' with his team and plow, turned the soil, and farms sprang up instanta- neously. Often the immigrants did not settle on virgin territory, but bought from pioneers, who, after disposing of their log cabins and half-burned woods, " cleared out for the New Purchase." The incoming swarms of immi- grants pushed the pioneer ever farther west. Settlement, railroad building, and immigration were in their turn incited by a heedless, precipitate disposal of the public lands. Originally conceived as a common property to be sold for the extinguishment of the national debt, the public domain came to be regarded as an infinite checker- board of future farms, to be put into the possession of in- dividual settlers as expeditiously as possible. The prices of agricultural and mineral lands were reduced; credit 1 From 1821 to 1840, 742,564 immigrants arrived ; from 1841 to 1860 the number was 4,311,465, of whom over two thirds were Irish and Ger- mans. 30 THE NEW DEMOCRACY was, for a time, extended to every one; a succession of "temporary" statutes permitted preemption; and finally the Homestead Law of 1862, and certain ill-advised amend- ments and complements thereto, let down all bars, and gave access to the land without effective guarantee of permanent settlement. These methods stimulated the cra- ziest excesses of land speculation and the crassest inequal- ities, but they also expedited settlement. An over generous land policy, fashioned by corrupt Congresses and adminis- tered by corrupt officials, succeeded, at the expense of all future generations, in hastening the already rapid conquest of the American continent. Uninterruptedly the westward course of the army of settlement took its way. The Mormons, persecuted in the East, turned the deserts of Utah into gardens. The cry of "gold" arose in California, and, dropping their plows and lathes, men rushed madly to the Pacific. Over the desolate, arid wastes, around the Cape, across the narrowing continent at Panama, came the gold hunters. Farmers, truck gardeners, and peddler merchants followed, and a new, rash, gambling civilization arose on the lands of the stately Spaniards. The, westward movement, halted by the belief in a great American Desert, stretched out two long, thin trails to New Mexico and Oregon. Then Kan- sas and Nebraska were opened, and fierce men from North and South came to fight for farms and to decide there the issue of slavery. For, while America grew in its rapid, disorganized way, sprawling over a continent, a nation all arms and legs and no body, the great disruption threat- ened. Slaveholders and single-handed pioneers struggled for the territories, for the continent of America. Forty years of compromises and evasions had brought the nation to the " Irrepressible Conflict." The seventh decade decided the question whether the continent wrested from nature should pertain to a single THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 31 nation, or to a group of clashing nations, representing opposing ideals. The railroad decided the battle and unified the nation and its territory. Backed by the rail- road, the Northern armies poured down from East and West and overcame the heroic resistance of the South. At last the North and South, estranged for generations, were united in a nation which knew no dividing line. Four years later, on the 10th of May, 1869, a golden spike was driven into the connecting rails of the Union Pacific Rail- road, and the two oceans were united by a rod of steel. The continent was conquered. The land had been covered. The public domain, opened by the homestead laws, lavished upon railroad corporations, despoiled by timber thieves, by mineral reserve exploiters, and by adventurers, honest and dishonest, showed signs of depletion. 1 When, in 1889, Oklahoma was opened for set- tlement, the overwhelming rush of land-hungry men showed that the patrimony of the country was lessened. 2 The processes of exploitation and waste were extended to min- eral, timber, and swamp lands, and were aided by machin- ery, which during the century had revolutionized indus- try and now lent its immense powers to the spoilers of the nation. Trees were no longer brought down by the ax, but vast forests were destroyed by machinery with the rapidity of fire. Iron was shoveled by steam out of the unprotecting hills. The steam drill invaded the coalpit, and wonderful inventions of warfare were turned against the disappearing fauna of the continent. Our frontier, the actual physical boundary of the coun- 1 According to the report of the Public Lands Commission of 1905, al- most one billion acres (967,667,449) had been disposed of in the United States (excluding Alaska) up to July 1, 1904. Of this, 114,502,528 acres were forests reserves, and over 162,000,000 acres were Indian lands and school and other grants to States and Territories. 2 On the first day of entry more than fifty thousand people entered to occupy the land. 32 THE NEW DEMOCRACY try, had been attained. For the man who had girdled the trees and built log cabins in Tennessee or Ohio, there was no chance in newly acquired lands in Pacific and Caribbean. The westward wave of migration, checked but still unspent, turned back upon itself. The driving force, the fierce ! resistless momentum, remained, but there was nothing against which to strike. The alkali lands of the silent desert, the cloudless blue skies of arid America, laughed at the plow and the harrow and the earnest, searching glances of the home builders. The Pacific Ocean, stretching out to the thronged coasts of China, buried the hopes of those who for generations had conquered the continent. The occupation of America seemed gone. It was not that there were no virgin lands, no unused mines, no primeval forests. All these there were, but they were preempted. Appropriation, not use, had cornered the opportunities. The railroads alone had received over a hundred million acres, which they now held at their use and pleasure. From the beginning, the pioneer had taken what he could and had held what he took. The gigantic railroad, with a thousand fold greater power, had done but the same. Farseeing corporations of enormous reserve strength had grabbed legally and illegally, had seized strategic positions, had secured themselves against the time when tens of millions of homeless men would press upon the no longer boundless, but strictly bounded, territory. While the pioneer had struggled with ax and plow against the resistance of trees and soil, a silent change had taken place behind him. Machinery had become highly specialized and had conquered the world; competition had become tempered by combination. Railroads had become trunk lines, transcontinental systems, and finally amalgamations of systems. The trust had arisen. The trust had tramped into the disordered ring of life as the pioneer had forced his way into the forest. In pioneering THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 33 itself, once the province of the individual man, in the dis- covery, appropriation, and exploitation of resources, the trust had excelled as it excelled in the refining of oil and the making of steel. The old style pioneer, the log cabin man, the placer miner, had been met and held off by his brother of a more modern type. The new pioneer might be a soft-handed gentleman, with a taste for intrigue and percentages, and as ignorant of woodcraft as was Daniel Boone of deben- ture bonds. Nevertheless the same adventurous, getting spirit which had driven and lured the frontiersman into the forest now attracted the like-minded promoter into the similar business of wholesale preemption. Like the pioneer, though on a much greater scale, the promoter preempted; like the pioneer, though on a much greater scale, he wasted, ravaged, and laid fire ; like the pioneer, though on a much greater scale, he built for himself and for the nation. Ruthless, greedy, imaginative, he erected, by fair means or foul, by his own brains and the tribu- tary science of the world, an edifice overpowering in its immensity. Against that edifice, against the preemption of financier and trust builder, the naked hands of the pioneer could avail nothing. His self-reliant individualism, formerly the mainspring of his strength, now reduced him to impo- tence. Preemption had grown large and prevented pre- emption. Individualism, fattened on reserve money strength, inspired by an avid appetite for gain, directed by science, system, and the subtlety of invention, had ren- dered individualism abortive. The new preemptor cir- cled his appropriations with excluding fences far more effective than those of the early pioneer. About his prop- erty, however gained, were legal grants, and legal con- firmations, statutes of limitation, corrupt political organi- zations, pliant judges, and the laws and the constitutions 34 THE NEW DEMOCRACY of the States and of the United States. The old pioneer was warned off the farm, warned off the cattle range, warned off the forests, warned off the mines. Discouraged, as though bewildered by the abortion of a primal instinct, the pioneer, the typical American, turned back from the physical frontier to lose himself in the city, in the wilder- ness of opportunities of the city. While the pioneer was felling the forest, the city had been growing apace. The city, which all over the world was becoming the new home of civilization, had developed in America even more rapidly than elsewhere. It grew with the progress of the pioneers; it grew even faster after the pioneer period ended. As the supply of free Western farms ceased, as the settlers, with no further place to go, began to exploit what they had, the alternative which the fron- tier once offered to the city disappeared. The progress of agriculture enabled one farmer to perform what two had performed before, and the surplus rural population moved to the upgrowing cities. The very isolation of the farm, with its sharp limitation of possibilities, sent the most energetic boys to the cities. The immigrants, finding the new lands preempted, remained at the ports of entry. The new opportunities, the chances which the pioneer had sought among the trees, on the plains, or in the sands of California's rivers, were now sought in the mysterious, congested, surcharged life of the city. Here the pioneer met a new frontier. The streets of the cities were underlaid with networks of telephone wires, electric railway conduits and privately owned water mains, so that no new individual or company could com- pete. The best city sites, those adapted for depart- ment stores, office buildings, and fashionable residences, were in the hands of men who held them at enormous prices. The road to political preference in the city lay through bosses who had preempted the strategic points of THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 35 the city control, or through financiers who controlled the .bosses. jv Everywhere the preemptor had been. The city, con- iceived in an individualistic society and composed of men who minded their own business and nothing else, had grown up like one of its own ragged newsboys, untended, reck- less, and weak. The preemptors, divided in grabbing, were united in holding. The politicians exploited the apathy of the public, and the financier exploited the cupidity of the politician. " Deals' ' and "jobs" had become vested rights in perpetual franchises, and what had been obtained by foul means was held by fair. Our legal traditions and our most sacred political institutions had sanctified the end, though they abhorred the means, and a midnight fran- chise grab was crowned with the sanction of the Consti- tution of the United States. And so in the city, as on the wide-stretching continent, men had preempted and bribed and stolen and bought in good faith, until preemption pre- cluded preemption and grabbing put a stop to grabbing. - The chances of the city, like the chances of the forest, became circumscribed. The city, like the country, was preempted. CHAPTER IV THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA THE westward march of the pioneer gave to Americans a psychological twist which was to hinder the develop- ment of a socialized democracy. The open continent in- toxicated the American. It gave him an enlarged view of self. It dwarfed the common spirit. It made the American mind a little sovereignty of its own, acknowledging no alle- giances and but few obligations. It created an individual- ism, self-confident, short-sighted, lawless, doomed in the end to defeat itself, as the boundless opportunities which gave it birth became at last circumscribed. Based though this individualism was upon the environ- ment of the American, it was also in part an intellectual heritage. National character depends upon the past as upon the present. Had America been settled by Lapland- ers, equatorial Negroes, Spaniards, Venetians, or Greeks, our civilization would have developed differently. We can- not understand the problems of to-day, nor foresee the solu- tions of to-morrow, without knowing something of the minds of the middle-class Englishmen who came to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. The roots of these men's characters ran deep into the soil of dead centuries. The Pilgrim Fathers imported traditions formed millenniums before by Angles and Saxons in the Baltic dunes. The history of England, from the Heptarchy to James the First, was part of their intellectual equipment. In their beliefs and prejudices might be traced the slow polit- ical and legal development of England, the stiffness and harshness of the common law, the tenacious middle-class 36 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 37 traditions of the towns, the democratizing, individualizing effects of Reformation and Dissent. The early spirit, strong, narrow, pious, became diluted as the Puritan stream flowed into the ocean of English America. Even in dilu- tion, however, it preserved, and to this day preserves, much of its individualistic, uncompromising, reforming quality. Another type of man lived in Virginia, and men of still different caliber were to settle Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. The Dutch in New York, the Swedes in Pennsyl- vania, the French Huguenots in the South, had still less in common with the men who plowed New England's rocks. But the Puritans prevailed. Though the Carolinian plan- tation owner scorned the Connecticut divine, though the wealthy and populous South overshadowed New England and New York, though Virginia, not Massachusetts, be- came the mother of Presidents, it was in the North that the spirit of the nation was evolved. That spirit was necessarily individualistic. The colo- nists were more self-reliant than even the original, self- reliant British stock, since, broadly speaking, only selected men essayed the ocean journey. No aid from a hostile* Stuart-ruled England could reach the colonist, who, sepa- rated from his neighbors by miles of treacherous forest, was compelled to rely upon himself. With the aid of his family, he plowed his acres, shot his game, caught his fish, made his soap and candles, dressed and cured his leather, spun and wove, did his own carpentering, and sometimes his own smithing. He made what he ate, wore, and lived in, and he made and held his own opinions. His philosophy was that of the lonely, self-contained farmhouse. When, after the wars with England and her Indian allies, the back country was opened, and the colonists, leaving behind sea and civilization, settled their farms in the virgin forest, a new era opened for American individualism. So long as the settlers had lived on the fringe of America, like 38 THE NEW DEMOCRACY shipwrecked sailors clinging to the barren coast of a lavish land, they had preserved some of their old traditions. What revolutionized them was their march into the continent, the erection of a mountain barrier between them and Europe. As the continent was transformed by the settlers, so in turn the settlers were transformed by the continent. It was the continent that created the typical individualistic American spirit. That influence was not the mere sight of beautiful rivers and primeval forests. Men are affected wonderfully little by scenery and wonderfully much by considerations of bread and butter. West of the mountains, individualism was rooted in the soil. All the elements of the trans- Appalachian life, the free movement, the initial character of the inhabitants, the contemporaneous political theories, the cross currents of immigrant nations — all aided in the development of this national characteristic. On the fertile lands along the Ohio and Mississippi, as on the unforested prairies beyond, success could be attained by the individual, reenforced by the occasional reciprocal assistance of his neighbors. No great irrigation projects were needed, such as made the Mormons a semicommunistic group and are perhaps destined to socialize the future settlers of arid America ; and no scarcity of land and no fear of foreign in- vasion forced the people into villages like those of continen- tal Europe, where all peasants must act in the common in- terest. The scattering of so small a population over so large an area led to an unprecedented exaggeration of the centrif- ugal forces of society. The individual stood alone. The most representative type of this American individual- ism was the pioneer. It was he who typified the expansive force of American civilization in the rarefied American con- tinent. This backwoodsman, overburdened with land, clamored for more land, for Louisiana and Texas, for New Mexico and California, for Oregon to fifty-four-forty. His THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 39 almost savage individualism triumphed over forest, swamps, malaria, privation, and solitude. It transformed his rough log cabin into a "castle" and his vague, far-reaching land and his roaming swine into "property." It showed itself in a sense of complete self-containment and in a churlish though free hospitality. Ignorant, dirty, often drunken, frequently brutal, as some of these "solitaries" were, they nevertheless possessed a certain large dignity not unlike that of the Hebrew shepherds. Forever displaced by steadier and more industrious beneficiaries of his adventure, this marginal man, with his eyes ever towards the West, loomed up large in the imagination of Americans, and cast his shadow backwards over the filling land and its cities, over even the national Congress assembled at Washington. The self-reliant, aggressive individualism of the pioneer was also the spirit of the American factory builder, town boomer, railroad wrecker, promoter, trust manipulator, and a long line of spectacularly successful industrial leaders. During the Conquest of the American Continent there was developing in Europe, as a result of changed economic con- ditions, a keen, assertive, individualistic captain of industry. The Oldham cotton manufacturers, like the colliery pro- prietors of Lancashire, Belgium, and France, developed qualities similar to those of Americans. In the Western land, however, individualism was a national, not a class, characteristic. The continent was one enormous workshop, and it was new, not like the scarred European continent, which had been the burying ground for a century of cen- turies of fighting, starving populations. In America, except the slave (the whipping boy of civilization), all were imbued with something of the spirit that in Europe pertained to a few. It was not that the American industrial leaders imitated the pioneer, but that they were subject to conditions simi- lar to his. Everywhere in America there was a low external 42 THE NEW DEMOCRACY cause or another, for the breaking of economic laws or of the tabled Commandments of God, America, it was pre- dicted, would shatter, and be one with Nineveh and Troy. America never shattered. Despite political corruption and absurd legislation, despite an extravagance of errors that would have doomed another nation, the rallying continent and the invincible buoyancy of the American spirit tri- umphed. Supply preceded demand and created demand. Confidence, not caution, was the law of business. A corollary of American optimism was tolerance. This tolerance, which was half-part indifference, extended to slavery, slums, piratical business, and political corruption. The presence on the continent of a great community of un- like, free, and nominally equal men stimulated this toleration, as did also the fluidity of American life, the facile escape from local evil conditions, the easy association in business and society of diverse elements, and the free exchange of goods and ideas between different sections. Prosperity, too made for tolerance. To a well-fed, well-housed, suitably mated man, few beliefs, opinions, or prejudices are intoler- able; and the ready humor of America, tinged with the joy of mere well-being, was both an antidote and an alternative to intolerance. The potential success inhering in all men, the chance that even the unfortunate might eventually triumph, widened further the application of tolerance. The " crank" must be humored because his crazy device might transform an in- dustry. The ragged and ungrammatical visionary might found a religion or an empire ; the log splitter might become Chief Executive. The immigrants — German, Irishman, and Swede — were tolerated, because through this very toleration these people "won out," and lost their alien qualities in the dissolving bath of American prosperity. The continent was big enough for wise and foolish, good and bad. Except- ing always the Negro — the helot of North and South — THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 43 only the polygamist and the atheist were held outside the' pale. Especially the atheist, for it behooved all men to believe in a Creator who had fashioned the continent and reserved it for the eleventh-hour American. The continent made us a " practical" people. We judged policies by "results" ; by immediate, visible, realizable results. We were not thorough. In America, it did not pay to be thorough. We did not think things out. We . did not generalize. Our political and economic life appeared j as a disconnected succession of suddenly arising problems, A jl each of which was to be singly met — or singly avoided./ We did not determine on definite long-time policies. To 7 the future — that beneficent but unknowable ally of Amer- ica — we intrusted the problems of the future. America lived under the dominion of the immediate. The Ameri- cans were a " practical" people. The crass, unbounded individualism of the practical Ameri- can found its highest expression in private business and the quest of money. Although Americans were idealistic, and even sentimental, although the nation, sympathetic and generous, gave to all alien causes which appealed to the common mind, nevertheless it was with a certain justice that America was called the Land of Dollars. The dollar^ was omnipotent. Traditions being weak, classes inchoate, and the state inactive, the individual in measuring his suc- cess accepted this only available standard. The very fluid- ity of the nebulous communities, the ease with which one man became successively laborer, teacher, farmer, lawyer, soldier, legislator, and banker, and the prevalence of the creed that any man could do anything, tended to reduce all the inequalities of life to the one equality of the dollar. It was, moreover, a useful and essential standard, for it was the dollar, not the title of nobility, or the university degree, that could conquer the land. The continent and its conquest fused with the conception of the dollar, and the 42 THE NEW DEMOCRACY cause or another, for the breaking of economic laws or of the tabled Commandments of God, America, it was pre- dicted, would shatter, and be one with Nineveh and Troy. America never shattered. Despite political corruption and absurd legislation, despite an extravagance of errors that would have doomed another nation, the rallying continent and the invincible buoyancy of the American spirit tri- umphed. Supply preceded demand and created demand. Confidence, not caution, was the law of business. A corollary of American optimism was tolerance. This tolerance, which was half-part indifference, extended to slavery, slums, piratical business, and political corruption. The presence on the continent of a great community of un- like, free, and nominally equal men stimulated this toleration, as did also the fluidity of American life, the facile escape from local evil conditions, the easy association in business and society of diverse elements, and the free exchange of goods and ideas between different sections. Prosperity, too made for tolerance. To a well-fed, well-housed, suitably mated man, few beliefs, opinions, or prejudices are intoler- able; and the ready humor of America, tinged with the joy of mere well-being, was both an antidote and an alternative to intolerance. The potential success inhering in all men, the chance that even the unfortunate might eventually triumph, widened further the application of tolerance. The " crank" must be humored because his crazy device might transform an in- dustry. The ragged and ungrammatical visionary might found a religion or an empire ; the log splitter might become Chief Executive. The immigrants — German, Irishman, and Swede — were tolerated, because through this very toleration these people "won out," and lost their alien qualities in the dissolving bath of American prosperity. The continent was big enough for wise and foolish, good and bad. Except- ing always the Negro — the helot of North and South — THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 43 only the polygamist and the atheist were held outside the'' pale. Especially the atheist, for it behooved all men to believe in a Creator who had fashioned the continent and reserved it for the eleventh-hour American. The continent made us a " practical" people. We judged policies by " results"; by immediate, visible, realizable results. We were not thorough. In America, it did not pay to be thorough. We did not think things out. We . did not generalize. Our political and economic life appeared j as a disconnected succession of suddenly arising problems, A jjl each of which was to be singly met — or singly avoided./ We did not determine on definite long-time policies. TV the future — that beneficent but unknowable ally of Amer- ica — we intrusted the problems of the future. America lived under the dominion of the immediate. The Ameri- cans were a " practical" people. The crass, unbounded individualism of the practical Ameri- can found its highest expression in private business and the quest of money. Although Americans were idealistic, and even sentimental, although the nation, sympathetic and generous, gave to all alien causes which appealed to the . common mind, nevertheless it was with a certain justice that America was called the Land of Dollars. The dollar was omnipotent. Traditions being weak, classes inchoate, and the state inactive, the individual in measuring his suc- cess accepted this only available standard. The very fluid- ity of the nebulous communities, the ease with which one man became successively laborer, teacher, farmer, lawyer, soldier, legislator, and banker, and the prevalence of the creed that any man could do anything, tended to reduce all the inequalities of life to the one equality of the dollar. It was, moreover, a useful and essential standard, for it was the dollar, not the title of nobility, or the university degree, that could conquer the land. The continent and its conquest fused with the conception of the dollar, and the 44 THE NEW DEMOCRACY possession of money was prima facie evidence of a man's usefulness to society. There was no cringing to gold, for all had it prospectively. But there was respect for it, since each man worshiped in the millionaire the apotheosis of his individualistic self. American individualism, applied to business, explained ^all our then economic arrangements and all our business methods and traditions. Individualism, run riot and re- joicing in its own excesses, led to a veritable pay streak theory of business. The American followed the one lead, raised the one crop, worked the one vein, cut the best trees, took everywhere the cream of the cream. In a search for dollars in a country where a dollar to-day was worth ten to-morrow, there was no wisdom in working poor soils, in preserving fertility, in gathering coal from culm heaps, in securing by-products, or in working for the permanence or salvation of machinery that could be " scrapped," of work- men who could be replaced, or of properties which could be duplicated. The American shipbuilder built ships to sail, not to last. Factories and cities were built for immediate profit, like the cheap shanties of a moving gang of Polish railroad laborers. The six-story house was dismantled to build the twenty-story skyscraper. Naturally, during the brief life of these temporary elements of a permanent civili- zation, each was worked to its utmost capacity. Intensity became the law of business. The night was made " joint laborer with the day," and in a few years of feverish activity relays of highly paid workmen got out of a new machine its full value. In the North the free workers were lured into intense labor and excessive overtime ; in the South, on some of the plantations of Louisiana, it was found profitable to work off a stock of negroes once every seven years, and to buy a new set with the proceeds of the cane. As for the property — the farm, mine, mill, railroad — the goose was worth less than the golden egg. THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 45 The sequence of such untrammeled individualism was a brutally unprincipled code of business morals. Every man / was presumed capable of playing his own game. The teir-* J derfoot from the East was expected to know a ranch when he saw one. If a simple-minded man bought a broken- winded horse, a salted gold mine, a city lot in Lake Michigan, or the mythical wooden nutmeg, it was his lookout. If he bought sand in his sugar, water in his milk, chicory in his coffee, or chalk in his bread, he had no redress. He could not appeal to a spiritless, futile law, cramped like a Chinese foot; he could not protest to a community which would have laughed at the fool and his folly. The buyer did what some men do when they receive a counterfeit dollar. He kept silent, and passed it on. Upon competitors, the individualist turned the same bat- teries. Competition, the fetish of America, was largely un- regulated by public opinion. The spirit of haggling was everywhere, in the horse trades of country fairs, the bar- gainings of itinerant peddlers, the real estate transactions of boom cities. The competitive spirit ran high among towns offering rival locations to a prospective railroad, and among the railroads themselves, which during rate wars might carry the passenger free and give him a bonus. The little country newspapers carried a competition for sub- scribers into their fierce editorial columns, and thousands of lawyers, doctors, and dentists, throwing aside professional restraints, launched into lurid advertising of competitive claims. In the relentless struggle for patronage, bribery, treating, false pretense, the buying off of rivals' agents, the damaging of rivals' wares, ingenious chicanery of all sorts, entered into the game. Competition was war, and in war all was fair. The apotheosis of American individualism was the rebate. It was the individualistic, higgling spirit carried to its logi- cal conclusion. It was a negation of the public character 46 THE NEW DEMOCRACY and public responsibilities of railroads, and an assertion of the principle that each man might be permitted, here as elsewhere, to make the best bargain possible, open or secret, and the devil take the hindmost. In the early days a man injured by a rebate to a rival did not waste time deploring the demoralization of business. He passed the counterfeit dollar along ; he secured a larger rebate for himself. In the eyes of that generation, a shipper who could not, through bribery, cajolery, intimidation, or bluffing, secure a rebate, was as deservedly unsuccessful as the manufacturer who failed to secure customers. The atti- tude towards the public interest in uniform railroad rates was summed up in the sententious phrase, "The public be damned I" The individualism of the American led to gambling ; com- petition was gambling. In America, as in other countries where the future is large and indefinite (but especially in America), gambling was the core of business. The continent offered a fortune to the lucky speculator ; the railroads car- ried the product, and the advertising newspaper, the words, of the lucky manufacturer to the farthest hamlet. There was no foretelling the fancy of the public, that credulous, milhon-headed, million-mouthed monster. A man might spend a fortune on factories and advertising — and lose ; another might invent a shoe button or glove hook, or coin a happy advertising name for his candy, soap, or cigarette, and millions poured upon him. The incompetent farmer found zinc or oil upon his land, or was overtaken by a great city, so that his pigsty became worth a dozen farms. The easy-going man bought a few yards of "begging" telephone stock and became a financial magnate. Men bought, luckily or unluckily, mines, stocks, great tracts of land ; they appealed to the God of Chance as they appealed to the silent continent. They placed the years of their lives and their precarious fortunes upon the cast of a die, upon a future hap- THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 47 pening — or failure to happen. America was one large gambling "joint/' where money, success, and prestige were the counters, and the players were old men and young women, pioneers and workmen, holders of trust funds, and little boys, devoutly reading conventionalized biographies of successful men. But it is of the essence of gambling that the few win and the many lose. Moreover, as the American game pro- gressed, the rules were changed to suit the big players.. 7 More and more, the little gamblers, " the pikers," " the lambs/ 7 staked their "piles," not against the resources of the continent, as before, but against what was to them a dead uncertainty and to the big gamblers a "sure thing." The big gambler used the little gambler's money ; the littler- gambler became the stake. Llhe chances of the game ft seemed gone, but the inveterate, little gambler called, not for a halt, but for a "square deal.") It was indeed a strange psychological world in which the American individualist found himself, when, with the reach- ing of the frontier, American enterprise turned back upon itself. The little gambler was like the belated boy. who dreams of a Far West of Indian trails, but finds there only railways and automobile roads. The individualist became bewildered when his familiar rebating became double-cross rebating, and the big shipper received both his own and the* little shipper's rebate, and he became still more confused when the big shipper ended rebates by acquiring his own rail- roads and his own pipe lines. The individualistic American was dumfounded when he saw that favorable terminal facilities, public service franchises, and other special privi- leges, given to a competitor, had ended competition ; when he saw competition become parasitic; when he saw the Itrusts organizing a fictitious competition against themselves. -oHis psychological development had lagged decades behind J'wae industrial development of the country^ THE NEW DEMOCRACY The individualist could no longer rely upon his automatic "unalienable rights" and his fair field and no favor. If he was a farmer, he could not by his own efforts secure just freight rates, fair elevator charges, or equitable grading. The individual manufacturer or merchant might at any time be overwhelmed through the invasion by a gigantic competitor of his circumscribed territory. The man who would not sell out to the trust might be crushed ; the work- ingman who would not join a strong union might be com- pelled. The city man could not by his sole efforts protect himself against fire, disease, or avoidable accident. He could not determine the quality of his milk or water, the hours that he labored, the sanitary condition of the house or flat ^ in which he lived, or of the factory in which he worked. \ Individually he was impotent, and he was still an indi- vidualist. j The monopolist, the big speculator, was also an individ- _>■ ualist, unabashed and unreconstructed. Complacently he sat at the gate taking a tribute which grew as millions were added to the population. Into his hands fell the usufruct of science and invention. Like Pippa he sang, "God's in His heaven ; alPs right with the world." The big gambler felt that he was an honest man, who, though not a senti- mentalist, had merely played "the game." The big gambler could not understand the hostility of the little gamblers. The little gamblers understood it no better. They too believed that to the victors in the industrial struggle belonged the spoils, and yet they had no spoils. Despite themselves they recognized an affinity with the big men, an identity in ambition and in point of view. The little individual- ists, to find a justification for their enmity, desperately sought a line of cleavage, a something which would separate the vicious who had succeeded from the virtuous who had failed. Lawbreakers accused lawbreakers; rebate takers, THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA Q rebate takers; the man who stole an invention protested against the man who stole a legislature. The culminating evil was not the illegitimacy of the baby, but its unbabylike proportions. The very qualities bred into him by the conquest made it impossible for the individualist — so long as he remained an individualist — to solve, or even see, his economic prob- lems. His magnificence estopped him from complaint. His optimism made him still hope for the "luck" which would turn his way. He was still tolerant of abuses and evils, which he hoped individually to avert. The individual- ist was still a "practical" man, who despised paternalism, socialism, anarchy, and governmental interference, and who still believed, in his downright practical way, that if you could only "jail" a few millionaires, the road to the con- tinent would again be open. The "practical" man slh monopolies, but he did not see Monopoly. He saw corrupt politicians, but he did not see Corruption. He saw evils, but he did not see Evil. ,i K Even to-day, the pure, unadulterated, ^pre-A damitic >in- dividualist survives. The man who feverismyTniys on mar- gin a few shares of "Sugar" or "Smelters," who throws himself into a hopeless competition with a trust, who seeks by his own skill to escape the narrowing circle of the pre- emptors, is an aborted American gambler. But the man is changing. The little individualist, having asked for the re- moval of the mote of individualism from his brother's eye, began to discover an identical mote in his own eye. Twee- dledum, having accused Tweedledee, learned that they were like-minded brothers. The cure of individualism was not individualism. Moreover there came to be raised other voices, — not of stark individualists, — and the demand went forth for re- construction and regulation. The little individualist, recog- nizing his individual impotence, realizing that he did not 50 THE NEW DEMOCRACY possess within himself even the basis of a moral judgment against his big brother, began to change his point of view. ^ Thus the Constitution — to which we have owed and still owe much — is a stiff, unyielding, and formidable — be- THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 109 cause venerable — obstacle to a true democracy, and a strong bulwark of the plutocracy. It stands firm largely because of an unlimited admiration, which forbids adverse criticism, and almost precludes discussion. According to current theory, the Constitution of 1787 is good enough for the people of 1911 or 2011 or 3011, its principles and solutions being v eternal. It consequently happens that the ancient squabbles of jealous, petty commonwealths still afflict a great nation, infinitely more civilized than the community which gave birth to this organic law. ^/Actually our Constitution is amended to-day (as it has /been amended for the last one hundred and twenty years) \3hiefly by process of interpretation. New senses are given to old words ; the growing political foot, by sheer pressure, changes the old stiff shoe. This amendment by interpreta- tion, however, is carried out not by direct representatives of the people, but by the Supreme Court, a body of nine honorable, estimable, and politically irresponsible jurists. This irresponsibility was intended by the Constitution, and has been approved by a century of acquiescence on the part of the people. Yet the latitude of this irresponsibility might well give us pause. Not only does the Supreme Court decide questions of far greater moment than that of war or peace, not only does it hold a constitutional veto upon the most fundamental exercise of national sovereignty, but this right is exercised by men who have never received the suf- frages of their fellow-citizens, and who, once seated upon the bench, are practically forevermore irremovable. The Chief Justice of the United States is responsible to his God and his conscience (as is the Czar of Russia), but he is not re- sponsible to the ninety million people. Politically, he is < more irresponsible than a city alderman, for the alderman needs our votes, and the Chief Justice does not. If eighty million people want a law and five of the nine judges decide that the measure is not constitutional, then, legally, the 110 THE NEW DEMOCRACY eighty million will not prevail against the five. There is no appeal from the five jurists to the eighty millions — for the people are not presumed to know, until told, what is con- stitutional and what is not. They cannot, except through the impracticable process of impeachment, remove the judges or appoint other ones. They must wait until the judges die and new judges take their place. In the meantime, the people who need the law also die. It must be admitted that, in the ordinary course, our highest federal judges have shown wisdom and patriotism, have sought to interfere little with national executive and legislature, and have been free from even the vaguest sus- picion of venality. But whether it be exercised wisely or unwisely, virtuously or viciously, this right of the Supreme Court, finally and unreviewably to declare a law void, in opposition to the opinion of a majority, constitutes, in the absence of ample facilities for a popular amendment of the Constitution, a flat and uncompromising negation of de- mocracy. Though the veto of the court is presumed to be based upon the sole ground of constitutionality, neverthe- less the probable tendency and economic effects of the law actually enter into the determination of constitutionality, of which the nine jurists are final arbiters. Even though the decisions of the Supreme Court were invariably democratic, and made for an extension of pop- ular power, still so long as these decisions were not re- viewable by the people through the power of easily amend- ing the Constitution, it would be an undemocratic way to achieve democracy, and we might well look this gift- horse in the mouth. But the general trend of the court decisions, at least until recently, has not been unduly favor- able to a rapid extension of democracy, to the effectuation of popular control over industrial and social relations. While the Supreme Court of the United States, like other bodies, has come more or less under the ripening influence of a new THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 111 democratic spirit ; while it has shown greater hesitancy than have many State courts in nullifying needed State laws, it has not so democratized our Constitution as to render possible the carrying out of necessary measures of political and social reform which other nations have adopted. According to Prof. Frank J. Goodnow, 1 there are some measures " which many believe to be absolutely necessary either now or in the future . . . which we in the United States are probably pre- cluded from adopting because of the attitude now taken by the courts towards our practically unamendable federal con- stitution." Among these measures " may possibly be men- tioned some which are apparently regarded as essential parts of a program of effective social reform ; such as pensions or public insurance in case of old age, accident or sickness where the recipient of the pension or insurance is not actually a pauper and where the fund from which such pension or in- surance is obtained is derived from taxation ; the regulation of the hours of adult male labor in any but the evidently most harmful trades ; effective regulation of the use of urban land; and the use of the powers of taxation and eminent domain for the purpose of furthering schemes to provide aid for the needy classes. Furthermore, it is somewhat doubtful whether without amendment of the federal constitution our political organization- can develop in such a way as to be in accord with even existing economic conditions, not to speak at all of the i future." Whatever may be the attitude of certain groups in the community towards such measures, continues Professor Goodnow, " it is believed that there are few persons having the welfare of this country really at heart, or not blinded by prejudice or class interest, who will assert that the conditions of the American people are so peculiar that we should close for them the avenues open to other peoples through which orderly and progressive political development 1 " Social Reform and the Constitution," New York (Macmillan) , 1911, p. 332. 112 THE NEW DEMOCRACY in accordance with changing economic and social conditions may proceed." It is not to be assumed that the attitude of our highest court, where it has favored the pretensions of the plutocracy or obstructed the expansion of the democracy, has been the result of a conscious, let alone an interested attempt to influence the balance of power in America. It is possible that occasionally there has been a subtle bond of sympathy between the politically irresponsible judges, raised to the very pinnacle of our social structure, and the more statesman-like and cultured of our irresponsible business princes. The road to the federal court runs through the practice of corporation law with the business magnates as clients, and points of view and social interpretations imbibed in one's youth are likely to survive middle age. But the real cause of the excessive conservatism of our con- fyVstitution, as it is interpreted by the courts, seems to be the comparative inflexibility of the judicial mind, a certain blindness to the changing social and economic order, an exaggerated veneration for ancient principles of law, estab- lished under conditions which no longer apply. The very excellence of the federal judge's qualities carries with it cer- tain limitations, a stubborn respect for the prestige of prece- dent, and an impatience of the cruder strivings of a raw democratic spirit. When we reflect that our higher federal judges have for the most part been old men, with the inelas- ticity of old men ; when we examine into the sources of their nomination; when we trace their activities during the twenty years immediately preceding their elevation, we need not wonder that instinctively, and with perfect mental honesty, they have gently inclined as a rule towards the side of privilege, towards a strict interpretation of the Constitu- N tion of the United States favorable to the plutocracy. All of this is remediable through the education of the judges and of ourselves, and through the creation of some stronger THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 113 popular check, formal or informal, upon the general deter- minations of our federal courts. 1 There exists, however, VS under the name of respect for the courts, a cult of judicial infallibility which, in its usual interpretation, is profoundly undemocratic, subtly demoralizing, and a menace to popular rule a hundred fold more damaging than a hundred adverse / court decisions. The decision of the judges (in the absence of any present possibility of an appeal to the people) must be accepted until reversed, but whoever is opposed to such decision should be entitled to express his views in the same manner and in the same terms as against a decision of Presi- dent, congressman, governor, or alderman. The judge is entitled to respect, as is the senator, railway director, farmer, car conductor, or head waiter; but to shield him, or them, from candid adverse criticism, to create about him a special atmosphere, is extremely bad for clear thinking and demo- cratic enlightenment. The political institution which re- quires " prestige/ ' pomp, or laws against contempt ; which cannot rely frankly upon popular support, is in a bad way. The courts will maintain the respect of the people by being the servants of the people. 2 1 It was a sign of progress when a great political philosopher made the discovery that already the "Supreme Court follows the election returns." 2 Some fifteen years ago, President William Howard Taft, then United States Judge, expressed himself as follows : — "The opportunity freely and publicly to criticise judicial action is of vastly more importance to the body politic than the immunity of courts and Judges from unjust aspersions and attack. Nothing tends more to render Judges careful in their decisions and anxiously solicitous to do exact justice than the consciousness that every act of theirs is to be submitted to the intelligent scrutiny and candid criticism of their fellow-men. In the case of Judges having a life tenure, indeed, their very independence makes the right freely to comment on their decisions of greater importance, be- cause it is the only practicable and available instrument in the hands of a free people to keep such Judges alive to the reasonable demands of those they serve." For a full statement of Mr. Taft's position, see Taft, William H., "Present Day Problems." New York (Dodd, Mead & Co.), 1908, p. 29 et seq. i 114 THE NEW DEMOCRACY Through the action of the courts in interpreting the Con- stitution, the widest possible powers have been given to a growing and entrenched plutocracy. According to President Arthur Twining Hadley, " the power of control by the Govern- ment was weakened and the rights and immunities of the property holders correspondingly strengthened by two events whose effect upon the modern industrial situation may be fairly characterized as fortuitous." One of these was the decision in the celebrated Dartmouth College case in 1819, which made a charter granted by a State a contract, the obligation of which could not be impaired, and which thus protected midnight franchises against all future attacks by the legislature. 1 The other was the Fourteenth Amend- ment to the Constitution, which, designed to protect the freedmen, has been interpreted primarily in behalf of the modern corporation. Since no State shall " deprive any per- son of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" ; and since a corporation is a person in the sense of the amendment, therefore any corporation desiring to resist a State or local law may appeal for " equal protection" to the federal courts. The jurisdiction of the federal court having been sustained in 1882 in a case brought by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the door was opened in all cases of attempted regulation or taxa- tion to an intervention by federal tribunals, with resulting delays, and a weakening of the State and local authorities. The mere expense of prosecuting these cases in the federal courts, while of little moment to wealthy corporations, was often sufficiently onerous to the city or State government 1 The evil force of this decision has been greatly lessened by subsequent decisions of the courts, limiting the extension of the Dartmouth decision, and by provisions in later State constitutions, requiring that all grants in future be made subject to revision by future legislatures, and that com- panies, desiring their charters amended, should subject themselves to similar conditions. THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 115 to prevent needed regulation. President Hadley maintains that "the two (" fortuitous ") l decisions together have had the effect of placing the modern industrial corporation in an almost impregnable constitutional position." "The funda- mental division of powers in the Constitution of the United States," says Professor Hadley, "is (not into executive, legislative, and judicial, but) between voters on the one hand and property owners on the other." The property rights so defended are essentially those of the "modern indus- trial corporation" in its "almost impregnable constitutional position." If the judicial appeal could be short, sharp, and decisive, if our justice were the simple and summary decision of an Eastern cadi, we might have a more even chance of an in- clining of the courts to the will of the democracy. Under present conditions in many States, however, the democracy would fare better by pitching up a penny or consulting a fortune teller than by appealing to the courts. Our whole judicial system is so complicated and involuted that it often has the effect of breaking the force of the popular will. A bill, late after passage, may be declared unconstitutional, and arrangements made in conformity with it maybe retroactively voided. By a graduated system of appeals from courts of lower to courts of higher instance, by a subtly intricate and technical body of rules of evidence, by interminable delays working in the interest of the long purse, by a multiplicity of reversals and self-reversals, no law, if contested, is sure of being carried into effect for many years. Even if, after a lapse of years, a State law is approved by all the courts, the political party originally advocating it may long since have passed out of power, because it has lost the support of people 1 "I call their effect fortuitous because neither the judges who decided the Dartmouth College case nor the legislators who passed the Fourteenth Amendment had any idea how these things would affect the modern in- dustrial situation.'! President Hadley, The Independent, April 16, 1908. 116 THE NEW DEMOCRACY who want " to see something done." Later elections may- have thrown the power back into the hands of the very in- terests who, by their injunctions and judicial appeals, have thwarted the will of the majority. New, often fictitious, issues have arisen ; the case of the people is defended by its secret enemies ; and gradually the reforming zeal dissipates itself and the proposed reform is forgotten. One might believe that the force of reaction could no farther go. As a result, however, of our rigid Constitu- tion ; of our checks and balances and hindrances and delays and vetoes, executive, legislative, and judicial; of our split authority and our attenuated responsibility, we have al- lowed to grow up still other obstacles to the effectuation of the popular will. For decades we tolerated in the almost avowed interest of the plutocracy an oligarchic control of the House of Representatives. Our system of congressional committees, says Professor J. Allen Smith, 1 " virtually gives a small body of men constituting a committee a veto on every legislative proposal,' ' while according to Mr. Bryce, 2 it " gives facilities for the exercise of underhand and even corrupt influence. In a small committee the voice of each member is well worth securing, and may be secured with little danger of a public scandal." The limitation of debate on the floor, the haste of the House, the hitherto arbitrary power of the Speaker to recognize members add to the ir- responsibility of the individual legislator, who, moreover, though he votes contrary to the expressed will of his con- stituents, cannot be recalled. We still needlessly hold to the traditional and indefensible custom of convening the new Congress not four months but thirteen months after election, and in the second session beginning in the December of every even year, our legislation is enacted by a " lame-duck" Con- 1 "The Spirit of American Government," New York (Macmillan), 1907, pages 193-194. 2 "The American Commonwealth," Vol. I, Ch. 15. THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 117 gress, by a House of Representatives which has already been superseded, and of which many members have been retired and are no longer held by the hope of reelection or the fear of defeat. "It is then," said Congressman John F. Shafroth, "that some (Representatives) are open to propositions which they would never think of entertaining if they were to go before the people for reelection. It is then that the attorney- ship of some corporation is often tendered and a vote is afterward found in the record in favor of legislation of a general or special character favoring the corporation." * Our plutocracy secures its favored position in politics through the existence of a governmental system too com- plicated to be easily run or easily understood by a busy and engrossed people. It is through these complications and traditional absurdities of our political life, from our long, incomprehensible, and intentionally complicated ballot to our excessively complicated nominating systems, and from our gerrymandered electoral districts up to our needlessly complex judicial system, that the plutocracy is enabled to confound legislators and voters ; to set off one public body against another; to confuse issues and to throw a cloud of dust over the whole business of legislation. The plutocracy gains, and the democracy loses, through the complexity and artificiality of our governmental relations. Thus the plutocracy going into politics in order to defend its position in industry not only bribes and corrupts legis- lators and parties (as its lesser predecessors had done before it), but intrenches itself in the intricacies and convolu- tions of our federal system, and hides itself behind the most undemocratic features of our Constitution. Not only does it secure the legislation which it wants, and kill the legisla- tion which it fears (or is merely vaguely suspicious of), but 1 ''When Congress should Convene," North American Review, Vol. 164. Mr. Shafroth recommends that the first session begin shortly after elec- tion day and the second session end before the succeeding election. ffi 118 THE NEW DEMOCRACY it seeks to prevent even the beginnings of a real democracy, which may grow up to regulate the plutocracy. As politics become integrated, and political enterprises, like business enterprises, are carried out on a larger scale, the plutocracy relies less even on its own standardized corruption and be- gins to depend more upon its almost impregnable constitu- tional position and upon favoring judicial interpretations. Finally, the plutocratic influence on politics, once a series of unrelated forays by independent financial interests, tends to became merged; and the political trust — in process — appears. This political trust, like the industrial trust of which it is the reflection, fights on inside lines. It is able to con- centrate all its forces at one point, to turn its organized energies upon any single, isolated manifestation of rebellion. Like the industrial trust it seeks to hold a monopoly of power. Inevitably, however, this political trust, like the industrial trust, becomes visible, and with its visibility, the countervail- ing and curative forces of democracy multiply astoundingly. Antagonists spring up. At first the political trust seeks to "buy up" all these strike competitors; especially the dem- agogues and "tribunes of the people," who spectacularly hate the trust, but who, without surrendering their invec- tives, endure, then pity, then embrace. Yet the more they are bought up, the more there are to buy up, since oppo- nents, like rabbits and rattlesnakes, thrive best when there is a bounty upon their heads. The party machines which the political trust buys tend to lose their effectiveness as the fact becomes known, just as newspapers, known to be owned by antidemocratic interests, tend to lose their influence with the democracy. The alignment of the people beyond party fines, or in new parties, or in old parties reconstituted, proceeds as the workings of the political trust become visible, so that he who votes may read. THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 119 This development, with the resulting conflict, is as yet only in process, but with each year the opposition to the plutocratic control of politics become more obdurate and determined. New methods are devised to prevent bribery of legislators, executives, and judges ; to place political parties under pop- ular control ; to simplify legislation and administration ; to facilitate appeals from legislators to public opinion. Step by step the invasion of the plutocracy into politics is accom- panied by an invasion of the democracy into politics ; by the creation of a more tenacious and intelligent interest in political affairs ; by the rise of a new democratic spirit. As a result of this growing conflict, certain new truths an being learned by both sides. It is being recognized, both by democratic and anti-democratic leaders, that our political forms are not a last will and testament of a dead sovereij but are themselves as mutable as the things which they regulate. Our laws and ordinances, our constitutions and precedents, even the inflexible Constitution of the United States, are all subject in final analysis to revision, review, and abrogation by the deliberate judgment and the determined will of the even now potentially sovereign people. Our checks and balances and vetoes, our political qualifications, prerogatives, conditions, and statuses ; our statutes of limi^ tation and perpetual guarantees; in fact, all our political institutions, however ancient and honorable, are but creatures of a people who, having made, may unmake, who, having given, may take away. In a nation which contains within itself the qualities which make for true democracy, the final arbiter of all relations, industrial, political, and social, is the people ; the ultimate standard of values, the ultimate sanc- tion, is not legal but moral. To this definitive moral judgment of the people, in process of becoming sovereign, the plutocracy must finally appeal. Just as it went into the legislature and the secret chamber of the political boss to defend its franchises and privileges, 120 THE NEW DEMOCRACY present and prospective, so now it far-sightedly comes into the larger arena of public opinion. It is its right. What it has to say in self -justification should be said out loud in news- papers, magazines, and books; in the pulpit, on the stage, in the schools and universities, wherever two or three gather . together to discuss public things. Whether the nation will be democratic or plutocratic in its philosophy, whether it will learn from both parties and borrow from both, must be decided by open discussion in an open forum. The ultimate struggle is a struggle for public opinion. u CHAPTER IX THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION THE plutocracy, to control the market and the ballot box, must control also the mind of the nation. It there- fore invests the last citadel, public opinion. There can be no fair objection to an open advocacy of the plutocracy's ideals and purposes. To every shade of thought, religious, scientific, political, economic, and social ; to every craze, fad, dogma, heresy, and inspiration ; there should be accorded a forum, a soap box, a ton of type, and, subject to a subsequent responsibility for utterances, full liberty of speech and print. The more frankly the plutocracy speaks out in its accredited journals or elsewhere under its signature, the better for it and its opponents. It has a perfect moral right to flood the country with its "literature," provided such writings show their source as clearly as does a legal brief. p> When, however, we speak of the conquest of the press by the plutocracy, we have in mind not an open and candid advocacy, but a subtle, devious, and anonymous campaign of suppression, misrepresentation, and falsehood. In secur- ing publicity, as in securing political power, the weapon of the plutocracy is the weapon of all wealthy minorities, the corrupt and secret use of money. The plutocracy quietly plants itself at strategic places on the avenues to the public mind, where it can exact its toll of the news and temper the truth to a shorn people. When it buys a journal or a poli- tician* it does not advertise the fact. The pirate ship flies a peaceful flag; the wolf in sheep's clothing is sedulously taught to browse. The broad avenues leading to public opinion are the daily 121 122 THE NEW DEMOCRACY newspaper, the weekly or monthly magazine, the trade journal, the book, the acted play, the sermon from the pulpit, the lesson in the class, the lecture in/the university. Of these, the most influential is the periodical press, and more especially, the penny newspaper. Americans are voracious newspaper readers. Our prob- lems are so manifold that no one can understand everything ; our ninety million neighbors are so unutterably beyond direct personal contact that we must trust to the printed word. In a small Swiss canton or a New England township, public opinion may be independent of a periodical press. The public opinion of a great and dispersed nation is halt and blind and dumb without its morning paper. Now the newspaper is conceived to be a mirror and a mentor. It is expected to give the news with the gusto of a town-crier and the impartiality of a phonograph. Its function is to narrate to every section of the community, from the baseball "fans" and the chess players to the financiers and the men about town, all the happenings which they require to know for their business or pleasure. As news-gatherer, it is not presumed to be above its patrons, and it dutifully gives information about prize fights which in its editorial columns it becomingly condemns. At the same time, by reason of a virtue inhering in the editorial " we," the newspaper is supposed, like the chorus of an antique play, to provide with the news a running moral commentary, to expound, interpret, prophesy, and enthuse. But the newspaper, for better or worse, is not a heaven- endowed instrument, independent of terrestrial condi- tions and considerations. Journalism is a business, like politics, brewing, and agriculture. Like all businesses, it is subject to the prevailing money economy. A journal may be ever so independent in politics, but it is never, except in a few negligible cases, independent of money or the need of profits. It is through profits, that cours- \ THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 123 ing life-blood of all commercial enterprises, that the virus of corruption enters into the body of journalism. A generation or two ago the influence of money upon jour- nalism was smaller than it is to-day. The thin little news- papers of those days depended for survival and success upon their subscribers, other sources of income being practically negligible. Frequently these papers were poor, usually intemperate, often ignorant, but they were always stripped for action, and were not readily muzzled or bought. The untempted editor, perhaps a college graduate, perhaps a semi-informed typesetter, towered above the inconspicuous and adventitious advertiser, and high above Wall Street, Lombard Street, and all the serried hosts of Mammon. After all, it did not pay to corrupt newspapers which sprang up like mushrooms in many dark places. So long as men had as free access to journalism as to the continent, so long as any youth who could borrow a hand press might start a new journal in garret or hall bedroom, there was no great encouragement to the financiers to pit their in- fluence against the omnipresent influence of the newspaper reader. Within the last generation the fundamental conditions of the newspaper business have so changed as to make journals far more susceptible to financial blandishments. Advertisers, finding printer's ink more efficacious than painted signs, sandwich-men, and barkers, invaded the newspapers. As a result of the standardization of business, the producer was enabled to appeal with his one standard soap or fountain pen over the heads of the middlemen directly to the people, and this big producer advertised through newspaper and magazine, whereas the middle- man had used the modest handbill. Advertising became increasingly profitable, and the advertisement-swollen jour- nals, especially after the advent of the lineotype, grew in bulk, if not in specific gravity. Since advertising value 124 THE NEW DEMOCRACY depends upon circulation, the newspaper, in order to secure circulation, was forced to offer itself to the reader for much less than cost. Two thirds of the newspaper revenues came from advertising business interests; news and edi- torial became a pendant to commercial offerings. The newspaper reader, though he had never asked for alms, had become pauperized. Year by year, the subservience of the editorial to the business policy of the newspaper becomes more apparent. It is a matter of common knowledge, reenforced by much direct evidence, that many journals will not print news adverse to local department stores. Rather the loss of a thousand subscribers than the slightest animadversion upon these Atlases of city journalism. Public franchise cor- porations, banks, railroads, and other great undertakings enjoy a lesser, though still considerable, immunity. Some journals maintain a black list of proscribed people, to be ignored or persistently ridiculed, and a corresponding white list of happy immunes, who may indulge in treason, parricide, or sacrilege without fear of the interviewer. Scandalous actions by proteges are covered with the cloak of kindly silence, for our press, though communicative, knows how to keep a secret. A sensational suicide is omitted from the newspaper to make room for an advertise- ment from the suicide's father. Of course, if any jour- nal turns State's evidence, and, from good motives or bad, blurts out the truth, the conspiracy of silence gives way to a conspicuous competition to furnish the greatest num- ber of columns upon the hitherto forbidden topic. Such suppression of specific news (some of which might well be generally suppressed, or at least telescoped), while, under the circumstances, immoral and invidious, does not constitute a transcendent factor in the society-wide struggle between plutocracy and democracy. It is rather a transgression pro domo; a taking care of one's friends. THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 125 Of greater importance is an influence which the plu- tocracy learns to exert upon the general tone of newspapers. There are many ways of exerting this influence without an actual purchase of the journal. In a choice between approximately equal mediums of publicity, a great adver- tiser often favors journals which more closely approxi- mate his views. A trust pays directly or indirectly for the printing of news or comment, valuable to it individually, or to big business generally. It furnishes free copy, together with paid advertising. It subsidizes the furnishing of " boiler-plate " material to country papers. As the great journalistic enterprises grow, as the margin of loss on each copy is spread over a larger circulation, as the necessity for credit facilities increases, the plutocracy, through its control of a hierarchy of banks, sets its seal upon the pol- icy of an increasing number of journals. The owner of the paper, usually a man of wealth and debts, is subjected to financial pressure upon his newspaper and outside ven- tures, as well as to social and political pressure. The trend of plutocratic domination of the press has been from influence to control and from control to ownership. The newspaper in the course of time became for men of large wealth a personal asset greater than was represented by its ac- tual money profits. It was like the old court which went with the manor, in which justice might be dispensed, im- munity sold, or private vengeance wreaked. The pur- chased newspaper might offer sanctuary to the wealthy transgressor, who knew not where to lay his reputation. It might, with every semblance of virtue, surreptitiously connive at its owner's raid upon the public treas- ury. The progressive development of the newspaper busi- ness tended to increase this plutocratic ownership of pa- pers, in whole or in part. Divorced from the dwindling personality of its editor, become a thing of stocks and bonds, the newspaper soon became vendible in parts, and sub- 126 THE NEW DEMOCRACY ject to that law of business integration by which small enterprises tend to become subsidiary to larger ones. As the trust often bought out the political party, instead of continuing to buy its product, legislation, so it now bought out its needed newspapers, instead of continuing to buy their products, predigested news, and sterilized editorials. This influence of the plutocracy over the press, like its influence over the political party, was not obtained in the first instance as the result of a class-conscious policy, but by each man securing the publicity facilities which he needed for his business or preferment. As time went on, however, the plutocracy's control of publicity, like its con- trol of politics, became standardized, systematized, and subtilized. It became possible for large corporations to lend each other their respective publicity, like their political, facilities. The daily of an Eastern street rail- way magnate defended all manner of spoliation in West and North and South. A "ring" newspaper in a Middle Western city fought direct primaries on the Pacific Coast. A newspaper taking the popular side in a local contest found that it was offending a larger advertiser, who was a financial dependent of a beneficiary of an ally of the in- terests attacked. Large corporations conducted publicity departments through astute newspaper men, who knew the journalistic ropes as the paid lobbyist knew the legis- lative ropes. The campaign of the corporation was spe- cific and subtle. So long as it secured what it wanted, silence or a defense, the corporation did not care how rabid was the newspaper in general discussions. In publicity as in politics, bought demagogues had their place and office, *md were not without their reward. The control over publicity becomes more systematic as the newspaper business becomes concentrated. Dur- ing the last fifteen years the number of newspapers has been rapidly declining in proportion to population, and an en- THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 127 larging share of the circulation is going to a relatively decreasing number of journals. Chains of newspapers are established in various cities, and unacknowledged alli- ances are formed between papers controlled by allied busi- ness interests. The old resort of the public — to start a new journal — is no longer so available. The success of such new and independent journals becomes problemati- cal, because of the competition of venal periodicals, sub- sidized by advertisers, or maintained by big business in- terests at a profitable loss. The strategic value of the venal paper may be heightened by its being a member in a powerful and rigorously exclusive press association, membership in which gives a monopoly value, superior to that of membership in a stock exchange. A new journal of protest might not even secure a news service. In the matter of journalistic independence we are los- ing the safety which inheres in a multitude of counselors. We are putting our eggs into one basket. But the advantage of putting your eggs into one bas- ket is that you are more likely to watch that basket. De- spite the greater control of newspaper publicity by the plutocracy, that control remains qualified, partial, and subject to certain counteracting and curative forces. In the first place many of the faults of our garrulous and somewhat slipshod and unveracious press are due not to the plutocracy, as we love to believe, but to our own careless, exaggerating, and scandal-loving selves. On our sober days we protest against the journalistic pur- veying of lies. We long for a pure food law which would apply to intellectual aliments, which would compel an edi- tor to give with each newspaper "story" the exact propor- tions of suppression, indirection, false emphasis, subtle detraction, and other ingredients. And yet, we millions of readers do not skip the highly improbable and dubious details of a murder, accident, or divorce to improve our 128 THE NEW DEMOCRACY minds with an editorial on the " Reform of Procedure in Magistrates Courts." In our discursive newspaper read- ing we seem to prefer recreation to culture, vivacity to exactness, and two half-truths to one whole one. Still more important is the fact, almost invariably over- looked, that much of the vilification in which some of our newspapers indulge is in the supposed interest, not of the plutocracy, but of ourselves, the great crowd. 1 Many unpopular causes, good and bad, are subjected to an habit- ual misrepresentation; many men, good and bad, who do not square with popular beliefs and prejudices, are over- whelmed with an unbelievable mass of printed false- hood. There are some plutocratic journals which are above these man-hunts, just as there are some democratic journals which delight in them. The cure for these jour-" nalistic lynchings, unlike the cure of other newspaper evils, lies not in the democratization of the press^ but in the in- tellectual and moral progress of the democracy/ Not all the evils connected with our rapid newspaper growth are due to the plutocracy. Not all attempts to " influence " the press are successful. Our editors have their full share of our common instinctive honesty, and journalistic probity does not succumb to a single temptation. 2 1 Newspapers, like statesmen, generals, authors, saloon-bullies, and the rest of us, like to have the backing of the crowd. Even the debauched journal, hugging the illusion of its innocence, delights to gain even the tem- porary approval of a public to which it is bound by the dual hope of sub- scription and advertisement. Like Falstaff, it will not "turn upon the true prince," but is "a coward on instinct." But when, backed by a million careless readers, it attacks one friendless man or one lonely woman ; when, in defense of things which have been believed for all time, it makes a desperate charge against the first, halting, half-formulated conception of a new truth, not the Numidian lion may compare with it for courage. 2 While some struggling journals buy their independence at an enormous financial sacrifice, others, with greater money resources, lightly sell them- selves on a cold calculation of profits. There are great newspapers — prominent and decorous — who surrender themselves to a sleek political prostitution without the excuse either of passion or poverty. THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 129 A certain safety lies in the multiplicity of forces influenc- ing the newspaper. It seldom if ever happens that all ad- vertisers, or a large majority, desire the suppression of the identical news, or the printing of the identical falsehood, even though many of them may be agreed upon a more or less definite deflection of newspaper policy. Many ad- vertisers have the same interests as have the readers. Advertisers are, after all, primarily interested in selling goods, not in distorting facts or in expounding political philosophies. Again, the value of the newspaper to the advertiser depends upon its readers, and, since readers fall off if they do not get what they think is the news, the paper is often obliged to sacrifice an advertiser or two for the sake of a pregnant circulation. Such a policy pleases advertisers unaffected by the particular "story," since it gives the " independent" journal a prestige which casts a reflected glory on the men who advertise in its columns. Although much news is suppressed and other news is colored, although, by reason of the veto of moneyed men, the editorials often tend to become vapid and timid, yet it is perhaps no great exaggeration to say that the man who pays his penny for the newspaper exerts in the mass, even to-day, a more open, if not actually a stronger, influence upon its expressed opinion than the ten-thousand-dollar advertiser or the million-dollar creditor. The pressure of the plutocracy is less insistent upon the journal than upon the political party, because the newspaper reader votes every day and enjoys the privilege of initiative, refer- endum, and recall. If he does not like the paper, he changes without so much as a letter to the editor. The venal newspaper is thus like the rope in a tug of war. The subscribers pull it their way by the implied threat to withdraw their pennies ; financial groups exercise their "pull" through the threat of withdrawing advertisements or credit. The editor, once a power and a voice, has ceased 130 THE NEW DEMOCRACY to be anything but an umpire, the paid servant of the owner, who in turn is the servant of his customers. The journal, acknowledging a double or even a multiple allegiance, becomes intellectually and morally cross-eyed. -The result is that each element in the community re- ceives from the venal newspaper what it is able to extort or willing to purchase. In many of our great city journals, workingmen, who (because of their smaller general pur- chasing capacity) are among the less valuable of sub- scribers, do not receive fair treatment in news or edito- rial, but are promise-crammed, and fed with large phrases. Ignorant groups receive a counterfeit sympathy but no real assistance. The intelligent reader, on the other hand, is a formidable and imperious person, who gets in journal- ism what he wants, or something like it, not only because his penny is needed, but because if he does not read the paper, the advertiser will not advertise in it. As for the bias of the paper, the intelligent reader learns it and dis- counts it. He does not follow the editorial — at least, not very far. The editorial follows him. As for the news, he does not believe what he reads, but reads what he believes. Potentially, the subscribers are more powerful than any corrupting financial interests, because in the final analy- sis, a journal is not a journal unless read. Actually, the subscribers are effective in proportion as they are intelli- gent and unitedly determined that the news shall be un v sophisticated, and the editorials their own. Adultera- tion of news, like adulteration of other products for sale, is incited by profits, but is limited by the public's recog- nition that the article is adulterated. The influence of the plutocracy on the newspaper, even on the newspaper which it secretly owns, is thus so circum- scribed that its teachings are necessarily subtle, and its suggestions indirect. The plutocracy does not proclaim that political corruption, misery, slums, unequal distri- THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 131 bution of wealth, and other present-day evils are good. We could not be made to believe it. Nor are we taught that democracy is bad. We could not be made to believe that. We are rather taught that while evil exists, proposed remedies are always worse. We are cautioned against flying to evils that we know not of ; against following our natural leaders ; against adopting any of the means nec- essary to attain the democratic ends so grudgingly ap- proved. The plutocratic influence on public opinion, in so far as it is not merely an effort to justify certain men or par- ticular financial manipulations, is directed in this covert manner against innovation. The doctrine of "let well, enough alone" is advocated by those who prosper inordi- nately. Our conservative traditions are fulsomely praised, while democratic experiments are derided and their in- evitable failure prophesied. The appeal is always to the old. New laws and constitutions are too likely to be demo- cratic. For the mass of new ideas fermenting in popu- lar movements (in the democracies of 1800 and 1828, in the Abolitionist, Free Soil, Early Republican, Labor, Popu- list, Socialist parties), for all manifestations of democratic humanitarianism, the plutocracy has, and has always had, nothing but contempt — and fear. The plutocracy exalts good, old, judicial precedents, and its patriotism takes on a mellow, meerschaum, retrospective tinge, which is mere reactionism, as opposed to a patriotism which looks forward to a better America. The plutocracy preaches individual liberty, the glorious fruits of free contract, the doctrine of the influence of good men, the survival of the fittest in business, an untram- meled individualism, a tame state with a ring through its nose. It believes that while government is wise enough to put us in jail, it is not honest enough to be intrusted with our money or our business. The plutocracy throws 132 THE NEW DEMOCRACY the mantle of property rights over things improperly ob- tained. It decries confiscation, specifying measures of taxation and regulation, not confiscatory in intention. It tolerates discussion but opposes " agitation." It ad- mits popular rights but decries the "mob." It combats the representation of the weaker elements in the commu- nity by "agitators," "demagogues" and "walking dele- gates." Finally, in its appeal to the God of things as they are, the plutocracy places its faith in checks, balances, safeguards, and the letter of an obsolescent law. But the plutocracy, much against its will, must defend too much. Sharing the same political bed with little crooks, it is obliged from time to time to plead their cause before the tribunal of public opinion. The respectable jour- nals of respectable, free-booting financiers must occasion- ally defend the immigrant bank against the defrauded immi- grant, the sweatshop against the sweated, the loan shark against his dupe, even the ward bruiser against the com- plaining citizen. Democracy in small things must often be checked, because by a rigorous logic it may be extended to big things. The plutocrat does not like the stunting of the poor, but laws intended to prevent poverty may shatter the very foundations of privilege. The plutoc- racy — no wiser than the rest of us — is a little confused. It has bad dreams. It is alternately too rash and too tim- orous. It does not always know what to do with its news- papers after it has bought them. Moreover, in its control of the newspaper, the plutoc- racy has not to deal with an inert public opinion, which cannot strike back. Just as the plutocracy's control of industry and of politics evokes a spirit of revolt, so its more partial control of the newspaper, as it becomes visi- ble, evokes a more or less distinct reaction within public opinion against the plutocracy. Newspapers which too openly espouse the plutocracy's cause often lose in cir- THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 133 culation to journals assuming a more popular attitude. Simultaneously new journals of protest arise, winning their way against great financial obstacles, and a fresh outlet for public opinion is evolved in the popular, " muck-raking/ ' reformatory magazine. /*"-* The magazine suffers, like the newspaper, from the very conditions which make for its extension and popularity; in other words, from a preponderance of advertising reve- nues, and a circulation at a price below cost. Being national \in scope, however, it is at least freer from local pressure, and it is never so dependent upon a single class of adver- tisers as is the city newspaper upon the department stores. Moreover, because of its freedom from narrow geographical limits, it is able to seek from the enormous population of the country a larger number of like-minded people. Consequently, the popular magazine is perhaps more sinf- ple, direct, progressive, and dignified than is the daily news- paper, and despite the narrow gauntlet which it runs, be- tween its increasing cost of production and its lowered price it has hitherto managed better than the newspaper maintain its independence. To a considerable extent the reformatory magazine is a powerful antidote to those of our newspapers which, while much-protesting against distant evils, are singularly charitable towards offenders nearer home. While the magazine, like other business organs of pub- licity, does not therefore enjoy an absolute freedom in choosing sides, still the tendency during the last decade seems to have been towards an increasing circulation and profitableness of periodicals representing democratic ideals, or, what is even more important, of periodicals impar- tially presenting in a popular manner the facts of our contemporary life, upon which democratic action may ulti- mately be based. It is not impossible, of course, nor even improbable, that an increasingly determined attempt will be- ice, to\ the J 134 THE NEW DEMOCRACY be made by financial interests, hostile to democracy, to secure control of the magazines. In repelling such attacks, however, the magazine reader should be more successful than is the newspaper reader, for the reader is less de- pendent upon the magazine than upon the newspaper, while the magazine is even more dependent than is the newspaper upon the reader. The reader's prefer- ences in magazines are balanced to the finest point, and the slightest change in policy, by pleasing or displeas- ing the million, may mean .stupendous success or irretriev- able failure. Our magazines, like ourselves, are very far from our ideal, but their merits are our merits, and their faults, our faults. The magazine, though often trivial, someP times banal, and occasionally vicious and timidly obscene, is on the whole more representative of the majority of the people than is the newspaper. ^,^— Even were all magazines and newspapers to be controlled and muzzled (which is hardly conceivable) it would not be possible to hold down the popular intelligence. The medieval method of cutting off thought by cutting off the head is no longer applicable. Truth to-day is a vol- atile gas, a great deal of which will escape through a very small hole. Close up the newspapers, close up the maga- zines, and truth will flow out through other outlets. Of such outlets there are many. A wide and free forum is provided by books, which, whatever their tendency or bias, can be printed if a thousand people will buy them. An enormous amount of uncontrolled literature in the form of pamphlets, circulars, reports of societies, etc., is constantly circulated. Nor is there an effective censor- ship of the play. The Theatrical Trust, although on pleas- ure bent, preserves a frugal mind, and this obedient, un- discerning servant of the two-dollar-an-evening public would as soon scuttle a ship as sacrifice box receipts to the preachment of reactionary principles. As for pulpit THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 135 utterances — if sermons are directed too exclusively to the solace of the wealth-burdened, the poor stay from church. Even our privately endowed universities, dependent for the bulk of their revenues upon the free gifts of the plu- tocracy, follow the general direction of the popular mind, and give to it tone, character, and an ethical interpretation. Although men have been released from University faculties because of their expressed opinions, and others have not been appointed because of their anticipated views, still v academic freedom seems to be rather on the increase than on the decrease. Curiously enough, while there has been a certain pernicious influence of great fortunes upon Uni- versity teaching, it is quite credible that every million contributed to universities out of our existing inequality of wealth renders a similar inequality less probable in the future. Political economy is taught by professors of chem- istry, physics, and gymnastics, as well as by professors of political economy. Let the alma mater be ever so cir- cumspect, her children will not escape contamination. Just as in the early pre-aseptic days hospitals were more dangerous than slums or battle fields, so to-day you are as likely to catch new ideas in a trust-endowed university as in a factory or a tenement house. Despite itself, the plutocracy subsidizes discontent and revolt. The plu- tocracy teaches more than it knows. .^ The issue is not yet decided, but as we review the field, it seems as though the plutocracy's assault upon public opinion, like its assault upon politics, invites its own failure by invoking a redoubled defense. The plutocracy strives for the possession of derelict newspapers and magazines; the popular mind strives for self-possession. The price of intellectual liberty and intactness is not only intellectual development, but eternal vigilance. L* It is because of this vigilance, because of a constant, though casual, relation which the people maintain towards 136 THE NEW DEMOCRACY e organs of public opinion, that the plutocracy's control of the public mind is by no means complete. After all, the newspaper, the magazine, and the printed book are merely organs of public opinion. They are not public opinion itself. Back of them all lies the mind of the nation, fed by sights, sounds, conversations; a mind more or less excitable and transient in its manifestations, but main- taining itself for the most part with a certain tenacious sanity. Not all the combined organs of public opinion can convert the population to lies too gross and palpable, nor to truths too unpleasant, and a thousand " special articles" cannot prove that the shoe does not pinch. Bruises and pains teach as well as sermons, and a butcher's bill may be more edifying than an eloquent editorial. this goal of profits (within bounds of law and decency) is legitimate. For a nation the conception is self-destructive^ ' The social program of the plutocracy is tainted by this individualistic conception. That program is too profit- cramped, and consequently too pedantically restrained, to gain general approbation. The man on the street, though astounded at the magnitude of certain benefactions, is seldom with any deep sense of gratitude. He vaguely feels that the social program even of philanthropists is for the most part second-hand. He suspects that it comes from an outside intellectual and moral pressure, or even from an abiding sense of avertible evils to come. These suspicions are perhaps unfounded. Yet the social ethics of the plutocracy sit somewhat awkwardly upon the victors in the great game of American profit- seeking. It is an ethic which, acknowledging no evils, pro- ceeds to cure them; which, finding the economic world theoretically perfect in all its parts, proceeds to patch it up. The plutocrat does not come by his good intentions honestly. He is a man who instinctively worships the status quo; who instinctively lauds the conditions of which he is the product ; who inevitably attributes the failures of others to those others' failings. If he becomes a philanthropist, or a social and political reformer, it is not so much by virtue of his philosophy as because he has a sense of order and dislikes 1 The plutocracy, like the individualists before it, exalts the instinct for gain as the one redeeming economic virtue of a humanity, otherwise immersed in slothfulness. Protestants against the plutocracy condemn this instinct as the original irrepressible economic sin. Actually the in- stinct of individual gain (including herein wages) is individually an end, but socially, only a means. 148 THE NEW DEMOCRACY waste. Moreover, city life and the newspaper bring home to us — and, through us, to him — poverty, illness, cruelty and a festering wretchedness; and to all these things t growing general comfort and an increasing national wealtt have made us — and him — most painfully sensitive. The cramping of the plutocratic philanthropy, however, consist* herein, that the huge benefactions of multimillionaires arc seldom intentionally and consciously directed towards th( equalization of incomes, the prevention of future inequali ties, the democratization of government, or the extension ol popular control over industries now given over to private exploitation. The profits of the plutocracy, even whei directed to social reform, are seldom intentionally enlistee a war against profits. The very qualities of the plutocracy have this inevitable defect, this prenatal taint. Our business magnates, thougl perhaps the greatest industrial organizers in the world in many respects reactionary. They demand free to the spoils of the continent. They claim the privilege (as price of their leadership) of levying a legalizec tribute. By arbitrarily identifying their interests wit! those of the community at large, they subtly exalt theu own demands above those of other social groups. The} believe in docile labor. They favor business secrecy financial absolutism, liberty of action to the industrially strong. They wish, for the sake of private profits, to rule despotically in the business field. /Because of this inability to rise above the conception oi /individual profits, the plutocracy finds that its own argu- \ ments, used so effectively against the individualist, are no\* Ndirected against its own pretensions. As the old individual- ist, so, in its turn, the trust was necessary, and was tolerated, The pioneer period could not lead immediately into the period of democratic socialization, because neither we noi our businesses or governments were adjusted to such a PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 149 transition. Our industry was too detailed, inchoate, multi- form ; our government was too amorphous ; our individual- ism too confident and dogmatic. Before a democracy was possible, the house must be set in order, the house indus- trial, political, and socio-psychological. The cleaner ap- pointed for this necessary task of preparing the house for the owner's occupancy was our resplendent, unpremeditated plutocracy. The task of cleaning, however, is a temporary one, and the more efficiently the cleaners work, the sooner they may be paid off and dismissed. The rapidity with which our trust builders, financiers, business engineers, and long-\ distance organizers are unifying our national businesses hastens their own supersession through the creation of con- ditions which make a still more efficient regime possible. The more rapidly our plutocracy, acting under the stimulus of profits, introduces the cooperative element into our busi- nesses, the sooner will the democracy be able to adapt this^ cooperative element to the socialization of industry. The function of the plutocracy is to reduce chaos to order. But order is the very rock upon which democratic socialization is built. When the plutocracy shall have finished its task, it must take its booty and go. 1 The new democracy accepts the plutocracy's theory of the survival of the fittest civilization. It recognizes that the efficient utilization of our national resources means the wealth, bread, life of the people, and that all political aspirations must conform to this underlying economic factor. The democracy, however, instructed by its wants, interprets the word utilization in a new sense. Where the plutocracy means the greatest wealth, the democracy means 1 That is, it must go as a group especially favored in an economic sense. Under any practicable regime of industry there would be an acute demand for the well-recompensed services of men with the trainings, abilities, and intuitions of our great trust builders. V 150 THE NEW DEMOCRACY the widest range of economic satisfactions. Where the plutocracy thinks of profits, the democracy thinks of recrea- tion, leisure, a wise expenditure, and a healthful toil. Where the plutocracy emphasizes a saving in wages, the democracy emphasizes a saving in labor. The democracy does not believe that a nation is rich because the majority owes the minority money and labor. The democracy does not wish the nation to possess that " wealth" which is merely the capitalized value of an economic rent due from the people to monopolists, but it does desire meat, potatoes, school books, public parks, and surcease from excessive toil. The democracy interprets utilization as such a production, distribution, and consump- tion of wealth as will give the highest excess of economic pleasure over economic pain to the largest number of people for the longest possible time. Upon this end all the indus- trial, political, social, and ethical ideals of the democracy converge. These two conceptions of efficiency conflict in many' problems. The plutocracy, where it pays in the long run, will usually reduce hours of labor, let us say, from twelve to ten a day, as distinguished from the early individualist or our present parasitic industries, which have no time to consider the long run. The democracy, however, will demand a still further reduction of the working day, if such reduction is to the net ultimate advantage of the whole com- munity, and whether or not it lessens production and profits. 1 1 At this point a senile argument comes doddering to the rescue. Even before it opens its mouth, you hear the question : "If eight hours, why not four, two, or one ? If you leave the safe ground of supply and demand in regulating the length of the working day, why work over ten minutes a day?" The obvious answer is that from the social point of view the hours of labor should be so regulated that the final increment of work should not mean more loss in fatigue or in abstention from recreation than it means in the pleasure from increased wages or output. It is a subjective analysis, more difficult to explain than to make, as are many of our every- day determinations. PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 151 Similarly the question of the " speeding up" of labor versus the " restriction of output," the problems of unrestricted versus restricted child labor often (though not always) involve the choice between an individualistic utilization in terms of profits or even of production and a social utiliza- tion in terms of life. Many trade union demands are to-day misunderstood because we are largely under the dominion of ancient ideas identifying the best utilization of our re- sources with a maximum of production and profits. / The conflict between the plutocracy and the democracy / thus becomes a contest between rival methods, purposes, and ^ beneficiaries of the exploitation of the continent. It is not, \and never has been (and probably no social conflict ever was), a mere contest between bad men and good men. To our trust builders are sometimes applied such indecent epithets as " vampires" and " bloodsuckers," while their victims, the common people, are represented as meek and humble citi- zens, who would rather suffer injury than inflict it. This ethical contrast, so solacing to honest poverty, does not, however, quite square with the facts. In actual life, affa- bility, honesty, courage, and other virtues have a way of dividing themselves rather equally between men who favor and men who oppose social progress. Rogues are often exemplars of all the gentle domestic virtues. Our tran- scendent and incomprehensible money-makers, after break- ing laws faster and more scientifically than legislators make them, decline into philanthropy and scatter their vertigi- nous fortunes to libraries and hospitals, while an imitating horde of lesser magnates — mere inconspicuous millionaires — unostentatiously give time and money to correct the minor iniquities of our industrial life. Our plutocrats are not wicked men. What is perhaps more significant, they are obsolete. ' The very qualities which fitted our plutocracy for estab- lishing efficiency unfit it for establishing a democracy, 152 THE NEW DEMOCRACY which, as far as the people are concerned, is but a higher form of efficiency. The democracy is learning that the elimination of waste means the elimination as well of the present-day trust. Just as the trust builder taught the old pioneer that, without a change in industrial organization, the conquered wilderness would relapse into a social wilder- ness, so our new democrats are teaching that, without a f readjustment in the distribution and consumption of wealth, / improvements in production will be of no permanent ad- / vantage. The mere accumulation of wealth will be but an * /aggravation of poverty. All of which the plutocracy does not understand. It does not in truth comprehend this fascinating industrial world, which in a certain sense is its own creation. It cannot con\ ceive how a society growing in wealth can simultaneously grow in discontent, and it regards all subterranean rancor as a lack of gratitude. The plutocracy listens astounded to men who once spoke of patriotism and national conscious- ness, but now speak of socialization and class consciousness, and it views with bewilderment the precedence which Labor Day parades and speeches seem to be taking over Fourth of July parades and speeches. The plutocracy does not understand all this "sectionalism," "demagoguery," and "incitement to class hatred." The plutocracy would like to issue an injunction, not only against the new spirit, but equally against the new and un- consecrated uses attached to the plutocracy's English. It had always interpreted the phrase "economic freedom" in the good, old, simple, juridical sense, according to which a poor Roumanian, consumptive widow, half-supporting her children by sewing, is a "free agent" enjoying "economic freedom," as is also the recently landed Italian day laborer, party of the first part, who enters into a wage agreement (through the padrone) with the party of the second part, a trans-continental railroad corporation. The new de- PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 153 mocracy is putting a new meaning into the old phrase, and is insisting on a real, economic (as well as a legal) equality between bargainers; upon a real, economic (as well as a legal) freedom. All of which is revolutionary, and, what is worse, confusing. The plutocracy, which is far from subtle when removed from the countinghouse, does not understand. When the plutocracy is attacked, as it often is, by the uncompromising class-conscious socialist, it answers his un- answerable attacks by equally unanswerable attacks upon the socialist. The trust builder, not knowing how to reply, not understanding even the terminology of his opponent, leaves his own position defenseless and invades and lays waste the enemy's country. To the socialist's arguments that the plutocratic (and capitalistic) system creates and preserves poverty, the trust builder answers nothing. But he does prove, or believes that he proves, that the coopera- tive commonwealth cannot be created by any forces now existing in society, that it could not be maintained without the desire for profits, and that, if established, it would dis- appoint its creators and would founder on the rock of a residual egotism. To the argument that plutocratic rule is no longer possible, the trust builder replies that the co- operative commonwealth will never be possible. Thus each contestant, without meeting the other, gains over him a splendid logical victory. To the proponent of a new, socialized, and plenary de- mocracy, the plutocracy opposes a similar argument. Against such a democracy he pleads as a devil's advocate. He describes the Demos as an ignorant, self-satisfied, rapa- cious, and violent brute ; as a brute which must be caged. In his eyes "the people" is a Thing far lower than its con- stituent individuals ; it is a mob, with a mob's insolence and a mob's cowardice. The plutocrat recalls many foibles, errors, and crimes of a stumbling, half-seeing democracy. He believes that the masses are always wrong ; that all prog- 154 THE NEW DEMOCRACY ress comes from the few. Democracy, he asserts, will let loose the original, ineradicable perversity of the mass. The human herd, set free from the leash of subordination, pos- sessed with the mad, evil spirit of self-rule, will run violently down a steep place into the sea, and will perish in the waters. Against such democrats, the plutocracy opposes what it claims are the best traditions of Americanism. The plu- tocracy honestly regards itself as merely the old American .individualist, a trifle rejuvenesced, — the individualist trying to make an honest living by developing the country. It believes that it is the true representative of our sterling American qualities of initiative and self-reliance. / In this interested attachment to old ideals, as in the very | humbleness of its merely pecuniary ambitions, lie the strength \ of the plutocracy's appeal to public opinion and the menace that it may corrode our national morals, or at least tend to ^maintain them on a low level. What is so transcendently perilous in our present conditions of industrial success and failure is not our inequality of wealth with its evil effect upon the consumption of the nation's goods, nor even the subtle corruption of our politics — although both are evil — but rather the echo of the rich spoiler's ambition in the soul of the average men. Our real plutocrats are not all rich. Doubtless, in the army of King Charles, the stableboys, most ardent despisers of equality, were plus royalistes que le Roi. To-day in America, just as the standard of democracy is borne aloft by some men of fortune, so, on the other hand, wealthy plutocrats are backed up by millions of like-minded poor men, penniless plutocrats, dream-millionaires. The men of great fortunes give resplendency to the ideals which unite \ rich and poor fortune seekers. Secure in the adherence of its humble millions of imitators and admirers, the plutocracy looks forward to many genera- tions of peaceful control of the labor, votes, and thoughts of the American people. It relies upon its enormous wealth, PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 155 and its strong position in industry, politics, and the machines of public expression. It believes that it still possesses a mis- sion, and it cannot conceive of the possibility of any alter- native social organization. The plutocracy hopes, by a self- directed curbing of its own worst impulses, to live many , years in uncontested rule of the American nation. I But this very program, which is the final appeal of the plutocracy for the suffrages of the people, is but the dwarfed expression of the new spirit ; is but the shadow, cast before, of the coming democracy. When the plutocracy could not understand the minds or interpret the motives of the in- creasing numbers of earnest men opposed to it, it should have begun to suspect that, despite its resplendency, some- thing was already radically wrong with it. The plutocracy, which denies the possibility of a democratic revolt, is making such a revolt inevitable. It is furnishing a common point of attack to diverse assailants. In opposition to the plutocracy, insurgent Americans are developing vague, large programs, in the execution of which the elimination of the plutocracy is but a first step. Just as the demand for an American nation was born, not of a common positive ideal, but of a concerted opposition to petty British aggressions; just as "the old nationalism " found its highest expression in op- position to an ethically dead slavery, — so in a common an- tagonism to a towering, menacing plutocracy, men imbued with new ideals and new hopes are uniting to establish in America a full, free, socialized democracy. CHAPTER XI THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT THERE are men who believe that the plutocracy is undying, like one of its favorite 999-years' leases. They believe that, as the years pass, the noise and fury of the battle against the trusts will die down ; the chants of victory will be sung ; the returning heroes will be crowned, while quietly the unscathed trusts will emerge from the conflict. Thereafter a wiser race of business princes will rule America through vassals, retainers, and mercenaries, while granting bread and circuses to a light-hearted populace. Through speciously democratic constitutions these rulers will fasten their hold upon a hunger-driven or pleasure- lured people. The Declaration of Independence will end in government by check book. Democracy will become the equality of underlings, dominated by pomp-shunning dic- tators. A completely triumphant plutocracy would be no new thing under the sun. In many ages we have had a rule of the wealthy, a gilding of the state and of the laws. Plutoc- racies have shown vigor, skill, and martial quality. There is reason, however, to believe that the trend in America is not towards a perpetuation of plutocratic rule nor towards a subversion of democratic sentiment, which would be its intellectual accompaniment. We Americans, (it is true, have surrendered some of our former aggressive egalitarianism. We have borrowed some of the class dis- tinctions of Europe, and have evolved some upon our own account. The "hired girl" is now the servant, sitting at the servant's table ; the tradesman enters by the tradesman's 156 THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 157 door; policemen, firemen, conductors, letter carriers, " sub- mit" to uniforms; 1 and an increasing number of persons accept the subordinate status involved in the receipt of tips and gratuities. But these facts, while they undoubtedly show stratification and the beginnings of caste, do not con- stitute an argument that we are forever to be ruled by a sovereign wealthy class. The plutocracy is still far from the attainment of a separate legal status or from a recognized economic sovereignty. As it grows in power, opposing forces grow equally. The plutocracy is not always on the offensive. Nor is its defense impervious. It has no glamour, no traditions, no superabundance of intelligence. It does not even possess a monopoly of the community's wealth. Its pretensions, to avail, must combat the growing national consciousness and the new skeptical knowledge of the multitude. There is a variant to the foregoing theory of a perpetual plutocracy. Some men believe that an eventual democracy — as much as is good for us — will come as a free gift from omnipotent .millionaires, like the charter of a city granted by grace of an absolute monarch. The plutocracy will act as the faithful steward of our liberties. The golden calf, seeing a new light, will descend from his pedestal and mingle with the baser herd. This theory is idyllic. Unfortunately, however, the full program of the plutocracy, while it may carry us far along the line of social reform, will not bring us to democracy. Moreover, were we to become the sudden peaceful legatees of abdicating industrial despots, we should not know what to do with our easy heritage. 2 1 It is highly significant of the fierce egalitarianism of our grandfathers that the wearing of a uniform, even by a railroad conductor, was hotly repelled as unworthy of a free-born American. 2 We have very few precedents of any real abdication of power by social groups or classes. In 1789 the French nobles, and in 1911 the British peers, made more or less graceful relinquishment of pretensions, but in V. k 158 THE NEW DEMOCRACY What we dimly see to-day is not the promise of a per- manent plutocracy, nor democratic institutions graciously conceded by repentant money lords, but the native growth of a democratic spirit. At the moment when maturing' forces culminate in the florescence of our powerful plutocracy, when the cleavage between Americans at the top and Ameri- cans at the bottom appears deepest, when millions seem doomed to an ambitionless, ignoble, precarious existence in a preempted land, the newjjocial democracy is born. Our hope of this democracy does not depend upon the chance of a sudden, causeless turn of the wheel. The motor reactions of society, like those of individuals, proceed only from prior accumulations of nervous energy. If we are now to move towards democracy, it is because we are already moving, or preparing to move, in that direction . Our conscious social actions are but a fulfillment, a sanction, an epilogue; the unconscious social strivings precede and prepare. That this democratic evolution is already preparing is overlooked by him who runs. The development is too multi- form and bewildering, and we are too near. If we fix our gaze at one point in progress, we conclude that results are small. If, however, we look over the field and note progress in a succession of social efforts, we are amazed at our advance. A democratic reform is instituted in one of our States with a blazon of trumpets. Thereafter we hear rumors of its working ill or well. Then silence. A dozen years later, we are surprised to learn that half the States have adopted the new institution, and soon we forget the evil conditions which preceded, and think of the reform no longer as an improvement, but as a thing upon which we are absurdly slow to improve. It requires a historical perspective to make any corn- each case the action was induced by the expectant attitude of a none too patient heir. THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 159 parison of present and past. "The heirs of all the ages" are spoilt children, valuing only their very newest toys. An infant born a few generations ago might have been elated over the steam engine; a child born to-day will find the telephone, automobile, and X-ray commonplaces. He will no more think of aviation as progress than we regard plow- ing and arithmetic as valuable social acquisitions. So great is the insistence of the immediate, that we find it well-nigh impossible to picture the state of, let us say, the workingman of a century ago — of the indentured servant, of the slave, of the man who sailed before the mast and was beaten, starved, and " hazed," of the workman arrested for debt, of the child without chance of education. A sunlit haze softens the outlines of the past, and inclines us to de- scribe present evil conditions in words which in earlier times had a harsher significance. We sometimes apply to mod*- ern labor conditions the word " slavery," without realizing how inapposite is a comparison of our present conditions with the auction block, the forcible separation of families, the willful maiming of slaves, the prohibition of education, and other features of the Southern labor system of 1860 1 Similarly, because we are so hypnotized by the glitter of T\ our plutocracy, we fail to see the countervailing develop- ments of the last twenty years in political, industrial, and J social life. We overlook an evolution which in many States/ and cities has already given a larger popular control ovetf government, which in one industry after another has sub- jected business to governmental supervision. We do no ; trace the new democratic movement in its innumerable ramifications; in ordinances, laws, judicial decisions, grou actions, and individual labors. And yet, without knowin in detail this vast, multiform movement, we cannot escap its impelling spirit. That spirit is still inchoate and speaks with many voices. To many men it means many things. It inspires the striker, 160 THE NEW DEMOCRACY who fights for " principles " even when the bread-and-butter balance is against him. It may also inspire an opposing employer, who, with more rudimentary a social sense, dreams of good houses, clean bath towels, and other welfare work for his employees. It inspires the city reformer fighting for "a city for the people"; the political insurgent rebelling against laming political traditions; the muckraker pain- fully hunting for "graft"; the inventor, engineer, bacteri- ologist, planning to remove physical barriers which impede a driven humanity. The new spirit is the language of social reformers, who, from being almsgivers and tract distributors, are becoming merciless, slow-speaking critics of social abuses. It inspires the philanthropic multimillionaire, who founds hospitals, libraries, universities, and research laboratories, as it inspires the revolutionary, who wishes to end both philanthropy and millionaires by reconstituting society on a basis of justice. The new message is heard in schools, churches, trade-unions, political meetings, social gatherings. One hears its echoes in the Pullman coach, the street car, on the "bleachers" at the baseball game. The new spirit is not all new. Before this we have known these types, or, at least, their prototypes. But what has been small has grown great, and what has been still has be- come loud. There has been a change in emphasis, which makes the new spirit a something different from the crass, state-blind individualism of yesterday. [(The new spirit is social. Its base is broad. It involves I common action and a common lot. It emphasizes social I rather than private ethics, social rather than individual responsibility. This new spirit, which is marked by a social unrest, a fnew altruism, a changed patriotism, an uncomfortable sense of social guilt, was not born of any sudden enthusiasm or quickening revelation. It grew slowly in the dark places of men's minds out of the new conditions. The old indi- THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 161 vidualism — carried to its logical sequence — would have meant impotence and social bankruptcy. Individualism struck its frontier when the pioneer struck his, and society, falling back upon itself, found itself. New problems arose, requiring for their solution slight amendments of our former canons of judgment and modes of action. In many spheres of economic life the individual began to find more profit in his undivided share of the common lot than in his chance of individual gain. On this foundation of an individual in- terest in the common lot, the new social spirit was laid. This egoistic interest, however, was shared by so many inter- dependent millions, that men passed insensibly from an ideal of reckless individual gaining to a new ideal, which urged the conservation and thrifty utilization of the patri- mony of all in the interest of all. In obedience to this new spirit we are slowly changing our perception and evaluation of the goods of life. We are freeing ourselves from the unique standard of pecuniary pre- eminence and are substituting new standards of excellence. We are ceasing solely to adore successful greed, and are evolv- ing a tentative theory of the trusteeship of wealth. We are emphasizing the overlordship of the public over property and rights formerly held to be private. A new insistence is laid upon human life, upon human happiness. What is attainable by the majority — life, health, leisure, a share in our natural resources, a dignified existence in society — is contended for by the majority against the opposition of men,- who hold exorbitant claims upon the continent. The inner soul of our new democracy is not the unalienable rights, negatively and individualistically interpreted, but those same ( rights, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," extende( and given a social interpretation. It is this social interpretation of rights which characterizes the democracy coming into being, and makes it different in kind from the so-called individualistic democracy of Jeffer- 162 THE NEW DEMOCRACY son and Jackson. It is this social concept which is the com- \ mon feature of many widely divergent democratic policies./ The close of the merely expansive period of America showda that an individualistic democracy must end in its own nega- tion, the subjection of the individual to an economically privileged class of rich men. The political weapons of our forefathers might avail against political despotism, but were farcically useless against economic aggression. The right of habeas corpus, the right to bear arms, the rights of free speech and free press could not secure a job to the gray- haired citizen, could not protect him against low wages or high prices, could not save him from a jail sentence for the crime of having no visible means of support. The force of our individualistic democracy might suffice to supplant one \ economic despot by another, but it could not prevent eco- nomic despotism. To-day no democracy is possible in America except a socialized democracy, which conceives of society as a whole and not as a more or less adventitious assemblage of myriads of individuals. The old individualistic system pictured the individual freely bargaining with the state, not only in a mythical social contract, but in the everyday affairs of taxa- tion and governmental expenditure. For so much protection the individual would pay the state so much taxes. "The subjects of every State/' said the great economist Adam Smith, "ought to contribute to the support of the Govern- ment as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the State. The expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate." l 1 "Wealth of Nations," Book V, Chap. 2. From an individualistic point of view, no theory could be juster. Our federal taxation to-day, THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 163 The individualistic point of view halts social development at every point. Why should the childless man pay in taxes for the education of other people's children? Why should the rich and innocent pay for better almshouses and better prisons for the poor and guilty ? Why should those who do not use the public parks and public playgrounds pay for them in taxes? To the individualist taxation above what is absolutely necessary for the individual's welfare is an aggression upon his rights and a circumscription of his powers. / All the inspiring texts of democracy fall into nonsense or worse when given a strict individualistic interpretation. " Government should rest upon the consent of the governed" is a great political truth, if by "the governed" is meant the whole people, or an effective majority of the people ; but if each individual governed retains the right at all times to withhold his consent, government and social union itself become impossible. So, too, the phrase "taxation without representation is tyranny," if interpreted strictly in an in- dividualistic sense, leads to the theory that government should be in the hands of property owners, that they who pay the piper (in taxes) should set the tune, that they who are without "a stake in the country" should not participate, or at least not equally, in a government designed to raise money and to expend it. In the socialized democracy towards which we are moving, all these conceptions will fall to the ground. It will be sought to make taxes conform more or less to the ability of each to ** pay ; but the engine of taxation, like all other social engines, will be used to accomplish great social ends, among which i will be the more equal distribution of wealth and income. The state will tax to improve education, health, recreation, which falls with especial severity upon people of small and moderate means, is immeasurably below the standard set by Adam Smith five gen- erations ago. i 164 THE NEW DEMOCRACY communication, "to provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare," and from these taxes no social group will be immune because it fails to benefit in proportion to cost. The government of the nation, in the hands of the people, will establish its unquestioned sovereignty over the industry of the nation, so largely in the hands of individuals. The political liberties of the people will be supplemented by other provisions which will safeguard their industrial liberties. /^To-day the chief restrictions upon liberty are economic, not legal, and the chief prerogatives desired are economic, not political. It is a curious, but not inexplicable, development, moreover, that our constitutional provisions, safeguarding our political liberties, are often used to deprive us of economic liberties. The constitutional provision that "no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law" has seldom prevented an Alabama Negro from illegally being sent to the chain gang, but it has often prevented the people of a State from securing relief from great interstate corporations. The restraints upon the liberty of the poor are to-day economic. A law forbidding a woman to work in the textile mills at night is a law increasing rather than restricting her liberty, simply because it takes from the em- ployer his former right to compel her through sheer economic pressure to work at night when she would prefer to work by day. So a law against adulteration of food products in- creases the economic liberty of food purchasers, as a tenement house law increases the liberty of tenement dwellers. In two respects, the democracy towards which we are striving differs from that of to-day. Firstly, the democracy of to-morrow, being a real and not a merely formal democracy, does not content itself with the mere right to vote, with political immunities, and generalizations about the rights of men. Secondly, it is a plenary, socialized democracy, emphasizing social rather than merely individual aims, and THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 165 carrying over its ideals from the political into the industrial and social fields. Because of this wideness of its aims, the new spirit, in a curiously cautious, conservative way, is profoundly revolu- tionary. The mind of the people slowly awakens to the realization of the people's needs ; the new social spirit gradually undermines the crust of inherited and promul- gated ideas ; the rising popular will overflows old barriers and converts former institutions to new uses. It is a deep- lying, potent, swelling movement. It is not noiseless, for rotten iron cracks with a great sound, and clamor accom- panies the decay of profit-yielding privileges. It is not un- contested, for men, threatened with the loss of a tithe of their pretensions, sometimes fight harder than the wholly disin- herited. It does not proceed everywhere at equal pace; the movement is not uniform nor uninterrupted. And yet, measured by decades, or even by years, the revolution grows. This revolution is comparable in extent and content with the Protestant Revolution and with the revolts which drove James the Second and Louis the Sixteenth from their thrones. The social revolution of to-day is greater than those earlier revolutions, for, reaching further into the consciousness of nations, it stirs more men and stirs men more deeply. In the Protestant Revolution, the subjects of petty German rulers followed their princes in successive bewildering changes of faith. In the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830, the Paris workman fought for the Paris manufacturer, without know- ing why. To-day, when education is almost universal, the revolution is in the perceived interest of classes still lower in the social hierarchy. It appeals to multitudes who sweat. It enrolls grimy, overworked democrats, men hitherto be- lieved to lie outside the range of social consciousness. I use the word "revolution," despite its fringe of mis- leading suggestion, because no other word so aptly designates the completeness of the transformation now in process. A 166 THE NEW DEMOCRACY social revolution, in the sense here implied, is a change, however gradual, peaceful, and evolutionary, which has for its cumulative effect a radical displacement of the center of | gravity of society. Such a revolution is the substitution i of a new for an old social equilibrium; a fundamental re- ] arrangement of the relations subsisting between conflicting or allied social groups. It is a recrystallization of society on new planes. It is a new chemical union of constituent social molecules. A relatively more rapid growth of a single organ or of a single function of the social organism, a hyper- trophy here, an atrophy there, may suffice to bring about a fundamental social overturn, such as we designate by the word " revolution." This revolution, in the very midst of which we are, while believing that we stand firm on a firm earth, is a revolution not of blood and iron, but of votes, judicial decisions, and points of view. It does not smell of gunpowder or the bodies of slain men. It does not involve anything sudden, violent, cataclysmic. Like other revolutions, it is simply a quicker turn of the wheel in the direction in which the wheel is already turning. It is a revolution at once magnificent and com- monplace. It is a revolution brought about by and through the common run of men, who abjure heroics, who sleep soundly and make merry, who "talk" politics and prize- fights, who obey alarm clocks, time-tables, and a thousand petty but revered social conventions. They do not know that they are revolutionists. Nor do all these revolutionists comprehend that they are allies. One group in the community strives to end the exploitation of child labor. Other groups seek to extend and improve education, to combat tuberculosis, to reform housing conditions, to secure direct primaries, to obtain the referendum, to punish force and fraud at the polls, to secure governmental inspection of foods, to regulate rail- road rates, to limit the issue of stocks and bonds of corpora- THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 167 tions doing an interstate business, to change the character and incidence of taxation, to protect and recreate our forests, to reserve and conserve our mines, to improve the lot of the farmer, to build up trade-unions among workingmen, to Americanize incoming immigrants, to humanize prisons and penal laws, to protect the community against penury- caused by old age, accident, sickness, and invalidity, to prevent congestion in cities, to divert to the public a larger share of the unearned increment, to accomplish a thousand other results for the general welfare. Every day new projects are launched for political, industrial, and social amelioration, and below the level of the present lie the greater projects of the future. Reform is piecemeal and yet rapid. It is carried along divergent lines by people holding separate interests, and yet it moves towards a common end. It combines into a general movement toward a new democracy. The world does not change at once, and a progressive action excites reactions, as it, in turn, is incited by them. There occur simultaneously violent antidemocratic revul- sions. Industry seeks to obtain independence of the state ; the popular control over government is resisted ; industrial forces are allowed to work to the debasement and im- poverishment of the citizens. These two sets of forces, the democratic and the anti- democratic, meet on a million obscure battle grounds every hour, minute, and second. The contest is so wide, so uninterrupted, so infinitely split up into big, little, and microscopic encounters, that no one man can oversee the field. It is so multiform and so full of apparent excep- tions that it is difficult to apply to this movement any large, consistent theory. Nevertheless no visible social movement can proceed without our forming mental concepts, which seek to inter- pret it. We cannot play our full role in such a social move- ment without forming at least a vague conception of it 168 THE NEW DEMOCRACY and of our relation to it. What our interpretation will be depends upon our education, occupation, race, religion, traditions; upon the part of the movement that we see ; upon the manner in which it affects our income and pre- dilections, and the income and predilections of our rela- tives, neighbors, and friends. Our interpretation is a com- bination-personal-group-class interpretation, for when John Doe conceives of the universe his conception always con- tains more of John Doe than of the universe. And group interpretations are but blurred, composite photographs of all these individual interpretations. The interpretations of our present democratic struggle and adjustment, although many, may be reduced in sub- stance to two, answering roughly to two differing tem- peraments and to two differing positions in the social structure. These interpretations may be called the theory of the social rebound and the theory of social expan- sion. Or, expressed somewhat differently, these interpre- tations may be called the theory of progress through poverty and the theory of progress through prosperity. Of these theories the first is the older and the more instinctive. All through history we encounter the prophecy that worse evil must precede the good. The cup of bitter- ness must first be filled. The avenger must be hardened in his resentment. When the victim and the avenger are one, the theory is that of the crushed worm. The theory of the social rebound presupposes conflict; and conflict presupposes classes, with sharply defined and mutually antagonistic interests, since if opponents do not recognize themselves as opponents there can be no war. The theory of the social rebound thus finds its clearest expression in the doctrine according to which social classes are engaged in a bitter and inescapable class war, in which compromise and conciliation play the smallest possible role, and in which scant regard is paid by either class to traditions of social peace. CHAPTER XII DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR THE theory that no real democracy can be attained except through a class war between capitalists and wage earners has been held in some form by almost all, if not all, socialist parties. According to this theory, the class war is not a voluntary struggle, provoked by ambitious leaders, but is an inevitable result of "the economic development of industrial society." That development, it is claimed, depresses the city work- men, the small tradesmen, and the little agriculturalists (peasant proprietors) by producing "an increasing uncer- tainty of existence, increasing misery, oppression, servitude, degradation, and exploitation. Ever greater grows the mass of the proletariat, ever vaster the army of the unem- ployed, ever sharper the contrast between oppressors and oppressed, ever fiercer that war of classes between bourgeoisie and proletariat which divides modern society into two hostile camps, and is the common characteristic of every industrial country/ ' x This theory of a class war, which is applied to America, as to other "lands governed by capitalistic methods of pro- duction, " conceives the state as a class-state, as an organ and a weapon of one economic class, and it conceives of society as merely a battle ground for classes, with interests antagonistic and irreconcilable. It underestimates those common interests of classes, those broad, unifying bonds in society which inspire certain national ideals and race pur- 1 See the Erfurt (1891) Program of the German Social Democratic party. 170 THE NEW DEMOCRACY poses. It postulates the ultimate reduction of all class antagonisms to one sharp, inevitable antagonism between the owners of the means of production and the wage earners. In its earliest form, in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, the theory of the class struggle involved something of the idea of a servile revolution, with the impulsive ferocity of such an uprising. The revolutionary class was to be hard- ened to action by a progressive debasement. "The forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions" was to be at- tained by the united workingmen of all countries who had 1 ' nothing to lose but their chains, ' ' and ' ' a world to gain . ' ' " Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic re volution.' ' Not only the reactionary ruling classes of 1848, but all friends of civilization, might well have trembled at the prospect of such a "Communistic revolution." "There is a very great danger at hand," wrote Rodbertus in 1850, "lest a new barbarism, this time arising from the midst of society itself, lay waste the abodes of civilization and of wealth" ; and the poet Heine thought with horror of "those dark iconoclasts," "who with horny hands would break the marble statues of beauty." In 1848 the workers of west- ern Europe had not recovered from the shock of a Titanic economic disruption, which in the course of half a century had lowered real wages, had dislocated the old industrial system, had robbed the workman of the protection of old laws and ancient customs (without granting him new pro- tection), and had thrown him defenseless into a new arena, in which there was no rule but free competition and no pity or remission of fate to the vanquished. Masses of the German workers, whom the Communist Manifesto seemed especially to hold in mind, were impoverished, overworked, often actually starving. They did not enjoy the primary rights of free speech, free press, free movement, or com- bination. They had no protectors in the futile German courts, nor in the churches, Lutheran and Catholic. They DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR m had no allies in the political parties. Beaten down by the machine and the competition of the English factory, the German workman was abject. So also, though to a less extent, were the English workers, who had borne the first brunt of machine production; and so, generally, were the working classes of all European countries. Men treated savagely respond savagely. Men denied the beauty of the world have small respect for the beauty of the world. It was no accident that the doctrine of an inexorable class war, motived by an increasing impoverishment of the working classes, was born of the repression and intellectual ferment of "the hungry forties." There seemed at that time no other way out. Stated then most clearly and absolutely by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,_m en of Titanic intellectual stature, the theory imposed itself, by means of successive modifications, upon the minds of millions of men. Long after 1848, when the workmen were slowly achieving political and industrial democracy, socialists continued to write under the impress of those early bar- barous conditions. This socialism, which I shall call "absolute socialism/ \ to distinguish it from the Utopian socialism whMl pi'ece'de'd " it, and from the conditional socialism into which it seems now to be passing, was a dogmatic, uncompromising, and revolutionary philosophy. It was a system of absolutes, of right and wrong, of things necessary and unescapable ; not of relatives, of more or less. It was the philosophy of wage earners who accepted what their employers gave them, and not of bargainers, traders, savers, owners. It did not strive, like trade-unionism, gradually to whittle away the employer's power, gradually to weaken his po-_^ sition, while recognizing it in trade agreements. Absolute / socialism claimed for the workingman the full product of I labor. Anything less, however little less, was exploitation.- — Exploitation, however, could not be little. The share of 172 THE NEW DEMOCRACY capital tended to absorb the whole product of labor above a despicable subsistence wage. It was not the employer's fault. However much he might be ridiculed and hated, the greatest capitalist of them all was recognized to be as much in the grip of the inevitable economic development as was the least of his employees. Because of this very / inevitableness there could be no parleying between laboV and capital; no joining of hands; no giving or asking of quarter; no softening of the conflict; and (in the early logical days of the doctrine) no preliminary betterment of the workman's lot. For the sake of his profits the manu- facturer must allow his workmen to survive. For the over- turn of capitalism nothing but this survival was necessary. The framework of this absolute socialism was the factory. The new doctrine visualized the sharp conflict of interest within the factory between manufacturer and workman. It was impersonal, necessary. It was a philosophy of tool users, who understood and obeyed physical impersonal forces. It taught that social evolution was as natural and inevitable as the expansion of steam; as irresistible as the passage of hardened steel through a yielding metal. Since private ownership of the means of production led automatically to " increasing misery, oppression, servitude, degradation, and exploitation," it followed, even without other assumptions, that private property must be expro- priated and converted into public property. Such a philos- ophy of wholesale expropriation would, it was foreseen, antagonize all property owners, including tradesmen and farmers or peasants. But, it was assumed, the automatic progress of industry would expropriate these " rapidly sink- ing middle classes," who would then instinctively join hands with other proletarians. Finally the proletariat 1 1 Engels defines the proletariat as "the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor-power in order to live." ) DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 173 . . '** would come to represent practically all society, and would be aligned against a "comparatively small number of capital- ists and great landowners." When that time came, the capitalistic system with all its exploitations and disharmonies would cease, and a new era would be born, in which eco- nomic, political, and social organization would be based on the common ownership of the means of production, and economic justice and human dignity would be attained. The unifying value of such a philosophy and its strong emotional appeal to factory populations in the grip of evil conditions enormously aided conviction, and the doctrine soon became a cult and almost a religion. , For, buttressed though it was by reasonings from science, absolute socialism remained in its appeal essentially religious. It taught the vicarious atonement of all our economic sins by one class which bears the cross. It foretold the advent of universal peace, and the end of poverty, hunger, vice, crime, and bitterness. It proclaimed a heaven on earth as opposed to a present hell. It presented to believers a choice as absolute as that between good and evil, thus saving them the intolerable travail of an appraisal of reforms and half measures. It shielded the future heaven from the gaze of the more skeptical devotees, assuring them that the in- evitable social revolution would shape society Jn ways un- dreamed of — but with a visage benevolent. It was not a quietistic religion; it did not teach submission, but faith and works, solidarity and revolt. It was a religion, inspir- ing and solacing, a religion which enlisted the affections of millions, and was contended for fanatically and literally, and not without a measure of theological odium. To-day men who were formerly convinced are escaping from the obsession of this imposing theory of absolute " socialism. They are beginning to see that the predictions of Marx, based upon the conditions of an earlier and cruder era of machine production, run counter to the mass of , 74 THE NEW DEMOCRACY evidence accumulated during the last fifty years. Lesser men possessed of later knowledge are learning to interpret otherwise the vast democratic reorganization of society which Marx foresaw. In the first place, as Marx later saw, no progressive im- poverishment of the working classes, no "increasing misery, oppression, servitude, degradation^ and exploitation ".Jias taken place. The workers have become, not poorer, but richer. While wages have not increased at a rate com- mensurate with the growth in social wealth; while the progress of workingmen has been everywhere slower than the ideals of our civilization imperatively demand and the resources of our civilization render possible; while the status of the unskilled laborer remains exceedingly low, still it is evident that in America, Germany, France, England, and elsewhere, progress has been continuous. Wages during the last half century have risen faster than prices, 1 hours of 1 It is absolutely impossible within the compass of a note, or indeed of a whole book, to give even an outline of the vast body of evidence pointing to the rise in wages in the industrial nations of the world during the last sixty or seventy years. One can here refer to only a few of the various com- pilations made in the different countries. For a succinct statement of the rise of wages in Germany from 1871 to 1907, see the masses of statistics col- lated by Dr. R. R. Kuczynski, " Die Entwickelung der gewerblichen Lohne seit der Begriindung des Deutschen Reiches," Berlin (Georg Reimer), 1909. For England, see Bowley (Arthur L.), "Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century," Cambridge (University Press), 1900. For France, see LeVasseur (Emile), " La Population Francaise," as also a later pamphlet, " Le Salariat " (1903). See also the report of the French Office du Travail showing the rise of wages in France from 1806 to 1900. For summaries of the course of wages in various occupations in Denmark, Nor- way, Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, etc., within recent decades, see the various tables in the Board of Trade (Labour Department), Fourth Abstract of Foreign Labour Statistics, London, 1911, pages 21-132 in- clusive. Any summary of figures so broad can have but a vague meaning, but it would appear that from 1840 to 1911, money wages have more than doubled in France and in England, and that the rate of increase during the last forty years has been more rapid in Germany than in England or France in the same period. These wages, it is true, are merely money or nominal DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 175 labor have been reduced, and factory conditions have been improved. Laws have set limits to the labor of women and children, have protected life, limb, and health of workers, and have provided for a recovery of damages in case of injury or death. In many countries (although not in America) the status of the workingman is improved by com- pulsory state insurance against old age, sickness, accident, and invalidity, and, in isolated places, even against unem- ployment. Trade-unions, growing to enormous national aggregations, greatly improve labor conditions. Through the spread of general educational facilities, through housing reform, health reform, and a progressive social policy, the status of workmen is further raised. In one country after another the workingman is enfranchised, and is protected from intimidation and fraud at the polls. The right to combine in trade-unions and to strike is generally acknowl- edged. Large sections of the working class are successively raised above the level of the unskilled, and fresh demands are constantly made by new industries for new grades of skill. While there are counteracting tendencies, while the increasing intensity and monotony of labor and the divorce of the worker from the plot of ground which he once owned work to his disadvantage, his continuous progress is indis- wages, but after deduction has been made for the net increase in prices (including the enormous increase in city rents), there is apparently left a fairly wide margin of net gain. According to an estimate of Gide (Charles) , " Cours d'Economie Politique " (Paris, 1911, p. 665), there has occurred in France, during the nineteenth century, an increase in the cost of living of not over one third, while money wages have more than doubled. This estimate does not take into account the relative amounts of unemploy- ment at the beginning and at the end of the period, nor the rapid rise in prices during the years since 1900. The masses of statistics, while they do not allow conclusions to be drawn as to the exact amount of the increase in real wages, do not permit doubt as to the reality of such a rise. For an " attempted explanation of the in- crease in wages during the last half of the nineteenth century," see Schmoller (Gustav), " Die historische Lohnbewegung von 1300-1900 und ihre Ursachen." / 176 THE NEW DEMOCRACY putable. The motive power of the workman's dissatisfaction and revolt is the enormous distance between his actual status and his increasing demands, rather than any hypo- thetical impoverishment. Not only is the wage earner not becoming impoverished, but there is no likelihood, in America at least, of an absorp- tion by this class of all other classes, and a reduction of all conflicts to one great class war. Although our factory population, recruited largely through immigration, is in- creasing at a stupendous rate, the other classes in the com- munity maintain themselves. In America, as in Germany, France, and elsewhere, the non-wage-earning class is actually growing. Despite department stores and " chains of stores, " the number of shopkeepers seems to increase; and even where these small tradesmen are more dependent than formerly upon the favor of an industrial overlord, they can- not be identified in interest with the wage-earning prole- tariat, and cannot be gathered upon a platform which calls for the social appropriation of the means of production. 1 The independent farmer is not disappearing. He is not becoming a proletarian. The bonanza farms, far from killing off the little farms (as had been predicted), are them- selves succumbing; and the tendency, in America as in most countries, is away from any concentration of farm ownership. In 1900 there were four times as many Ameri- can farms as in 1850. The average size of the farm was smaller in 1900 than in 1850 or 1870. The great estates of 1000 acres and more, while aggregating (in 1900) over 200,000,000 acres, are for the most part largely uncultivated areas or else cheap and arid tracts in the West, of which the cultivable portions are doomed to be speedily parceled out among an increasing number of farmers. Notwith- 1 According to the census of 1900, the number of retail merchants and dealers in the United States increased in ten years from 660,239 to 790,886, a rate of increase slightly less than that of the population. DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 177 standing an increase in farm tenancy, both relative and absolute, the actual number of farmers owning and operat- ing their own farms is greater than ever before; while, parenthetically, the tenants are for the most part not an entirely unpropertied class. The number of farm laborers (other than members of the farmer's family) remains small, aggregating only two such laborers to every ,;iive farms; while the chances of these laborers eventually to become farmers, although probably decreasing, are still good. A*"^ concentration of the land into a few hands is not micro- / scopically probable. A proletarization of our property-/ owning farming class is impossible. ^^ Nor are other small property owners being reduced to the position of proletarians. Like the wage earners, so also our small property owners are advancing in prosperity and are accumulating more property. That a violent concentration of wealth is taking place at the top is confoundingly patent, but it is almost equally evident, and is even more significant, that a wide diffusion of wealth is occurring simultaneously. Tens of millions of Americans own farms, houses, shops, businesses; or have bank accounts, life insurance interests, mortgages, bonds, stocks, or other property or evidences of property, individual or joint. In countries where there are income tax figures, a progressive diffusion of wealth can be statistically shown. In America the tendency is evident, although not equally capable of statistical demonstration. 1 The Marxist theory of a successful revolution based upon the creation of two hostile classes, standing nakedly opposed in society, one, the superfluously wealthy possessors of the means of production, the other, a swelling mass of miserable, 1 For European evidence, see Leroy-Beaulieu (Paul), "Le Collectivisme," Paris (Felix Alcan) , 1909. See also the Socialist, Bernstein (Edward) , " Evo- lutionary Socialism," New York (B. W. Huebsch) , 1909. For the diffusion of French wealth, see Neymarck (Alfred), "French Savings and their In- fluence upon the Bank of France and upon French Banks." Senate Docu- ment, 61st Congress, 2d session, Document No. 494. 178 THE NEW DEMOCRACY absolutely destitute proletarians, thus appears economically untenable. The proletariat advances; wealth becomes diffused; the small property holders increase in numbers. The theory is perhaps even more untenable on other grounds. For were a struggle between two such classes possible, its outcome might be very different from what Marx pre- dicted. In America there are men, who not only foresee, but actually see such a sharp and naked alignment of the two classes. For them there are but two groups — the very rich and the desperately poor. So completely is their canvas filled by sprawling, fatuous scions of multimillionaires on the one hand and overworked, unskilled laborers on the other, that they no longer see the average man, who keepsy no servant and has but a one week's vacation, but who, judged by the standards of other nations and other times, is well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, well-conditioned, with some leisure and recreation. They note only the melo- dramatic contrasts between excessive wealth and abysmal poverty, and they generalize and despair. For the extreme contrasts are glaring, and the rich seem so strong, so en- trenched, so splendidly and brutally successful, while the very poor seem to lack all elements of defense or aggression, — without money, without education, without political tra- ditions, without cohesion, or the common tongue upon which to build it. * A few years ago, Mr. Upton Sinclair, in a startling book called "The Jungle/' described the horrible conditions of the Chicago stockyards.- A Lithuanian laborer, named Jurgis, is exploited at every turn; his wife dies, his family is broken up; he himself is sent to jail. He passes from despair to vindictive hatred, only to be rescued by his con- version to socialism. The book is not false in essentials, whatever its exag- gerations in detail. We read accounts of almost equally DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 179 brutal conditions in Pittsburg, Bethlehem, and in the sweatshops of a dozen American cities. We need not go beyond cautious and authoritative government reports to believe that organized anonymous cruelties are perpetrated for profit on hundreds of thousands of workmen and work- women in the United States. It is murder veiled and im- personal, but it is still murder. It is an error, however, in fixing our attention upon this menacing problem of the destruction of our very poor, mentally to carry over conditions such as existed in the Chicago stockyards to our whole industrial problem. America is not divided into Beef Trust magnates and Lithuanian helots. Jurgis, poor, ignorant, dumb, and be- wildered, is no more typical than Armour, though both exist, and both are problems. From the men at the very bottom (so long as they remain there) less perhaps is to be hoped than feared. Such men are not the standard bearers of revolt, nor the steady carriers of the torch of progress. They are the stuff of which bloody, unsuccessful uprisings might be made, but they are too poor, too ignorant, and, by their very economic dependences, too inconstant and fearsome, to lead or even effectively to participate in the tenacious, long-continued campaigns which must precede any revolutionary change in the bases of modern society. You can vote illiterate men more easily than literate. You can appeal with a "full dinner pail" to men on the verge of starvation. You can convert a mass of underfed, and, therefore, irresolute and credulous, men into engines of tyranny and reaction. The nobler men on the hunger line are full of generous aspirations, but they have not preeminent intellectual power nor the capacity for objective thinking and sustained action. These starved souls evolve religious, not political policies; they develop kingdoms in heaven, not materialized cooperative common- wealths. 180 THE NEW DEMOCRACY That the most indigent among Americans are not the leaders of democracy may be seen from a consideration of the status of the Negro. Our ten million Negroes, con- sidered as a whole, are the most exploited section of the community. To the burden of racial prejudice have been added severe industrial handicaps and a general disfranchise- ment. The race is too poor, weak, ignorant, and disunited to make effective protest. For the most part it constitutes — through fault of circumstance — an inert mass, which could perhaps be more readily used, both industrially and politically, for the prevention of democracy than for its attainment. While the Negro is rapidly progressing, while the future may well bring forth a prosperous, intelligent, united, and politically intrenched colored population, the role of the Negro in our progress towards democracy will for the time being remain wholly subordinate. The same is true, to a less extent, of the most exploited of our recent immigrants. The newly arrived Italian day laborer is not so discontented, nor so effective a fighter for democracy, as is the richer immigrant who has been here a dozen years, or as is the son of the immigrant. Where the newcomer possesses a keen intelligence and an aggressive discontent, these qualities may make up for a low industrial status. Generally speaking, however, intense poverty, bear- \ ing the sordid fruits, pauperism, crime, vice, sickness, and premature death, does not make for democratic reform. A^ really effective discontent accompanies a larger income, a > greater leisure, a fuller education, and a vision of better^ ^ things. The hope of society lies, not in the oppression of men to the verge of revolt, but in the continuous eUmination of oppression. The hunger of the multitude is not the true motive of revolution. Hunger degenerates; insecurity of life leads to crime; and these, by enfeebling their victims, strengthen the oppressive bonds and make them perpet- DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 181 ual. A man or a class, crushed to earth — is crushed to earth. 1 What then remains of the early vigor of the theory of a successful class war between a swarming proletariat and a small machine-owing class ? If ^the men who have " nothing to lose but their chains" are actually the weakest, most ignorant, and most disunited members of society; if those who have nothing are only a minority, gradually dwindling (and are opposed to an increasing majority who are indeed poor, but are growing steadily wealthier), — what hope is there that the smaller, weaker, declining class will overcome the opposition of the larger, stronger, growing class ? If, on the other hand, the proletariat does not consist solely of the propertyless nor even of wage earners ; if rising wages, savings, and the actual ownership of the means of produc- tion do not take a man out of the proletariat, where is the alignment of the class war ? These considerations have not been without their effect upon the defenders of the class war theory. In the writings of many socialists the conception of a class war has been so watered as completely to alter its original significanc In many countries there have been observable the begin- nings of a change from an older, more abstract, absolute, and dogmatic socialism to a newer, more concrete, con- ditional, and conciliatory socialism. The tendency igj^^ especially apparent in countries which are democratically representative, and in which, therefore, a conciliatory policy is likely to secure a larger vote and a greater measure of 1 Neither Marx nor Engels believed in the revolutionary qualities of paupers and criminals. " The ' dangerous class, ' the social scum, that pas- sively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution ; . f its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed j v v tool of reactionary intrigue." "Communist Manifesto." Authorized- English Translation. Edited and annotated by Frederick Engels, Chicago (Kerr & Co.), p. 29. Ite, ^ (182 THE NEW DEMOCRACY immediate influence. It is less apparent in countries where political democracy is not so assured and where an uncom- promising party must fight for preliminary political rights. In Germany, where a reactionary feudal class still holds power, the Socialist party is the most effective democratic \ party, and many men who do not believe in the class strug- gle vote the Socialist ticket to express their preferences for immediate reforms or their protest against concrete evils. In more democratic countries, on the other hand, such as France, England, the United States, and Switzerland, the Socialist party is obliged to compete for the suffrage^ of the people with other democratic parties, with the result that not only is the vote smaller, but the movement tends gradu- ally to lose something of its old class war characteristics. "Some of our Socialist comrades," recently said Jaur&s, " interpret the class war in a sense much too simple, one- sided, and abstract." According to Sarraute, the class war is not "an absolute abstract principle" absorbing "the whole life of society." "As soon as the State is democra- tized, and equal rights are admitted for all, whether capital- ists or proletarians, ... it becomes contradictory and mean- ingless to talk of a class State." The rise everywhere among Socialists of "possibilists," "opportunists," "revisionists," and "Fabians" emphasizes the attempt to adjust the old absolute theories not only to varying conditions in different countries, but also to those broad democratic impulses which are now sweeping through other classes besides the proletariat. The tendency is to change party policy from a merely critical and sweepingly destructive, to a constructive, and therefore more concilia- tory, attitude, to moderate the demands, to broaden the appeal. The attempt to found a majority upon "the pro- letariat," upon the propertyless wage and salary workers, is being given up, and the appeal is now being made, not so much to "wage earners," as to "workers," "producers," DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 183 and to the masses generally. In the effort to secure the " adherence of farmers, even property owners are being ad- dressed, a distinction being drawn between the means of production which exploit labor, and those means of produc- tion (the small farm) which are already in the hands of the producer, and are therefore, inferentially, not exploitative. 1 These non-exploiting means of production, moreover, seem likely long to remain innocuous . ' ' One thing seems certain, ' ' says the American socialist, John Spargo, " namely, that farm ownership (in the United States) is not on the decline. It is not being supplanted by tenantry ; the small farms are not being absorbed by large ones. . . . The small farmer will continue to be an important factor — indeed, the most important factor — in American agriculture for a long time to come, perhaps permanently. If the socialist movement is to succeed in America, it must recognize this fact in its propaganda." 2 //In other words the Socialist party, to be- v/ come effective, must secure the adherence, or allay the op- position, of this powerful property-owning class. It can do this in one way only — through a surrender of doctrines. Tenets which alienate classes whose support is essential must of necessity be abandoned. Such doctrines may be bravely recanted or eloquently ignored, or by pro- cess of interpretation may be magically transformed into their opposites. But their change is inevitable, when the classes to which they were to appeal have changed. The socialist believers in a class war between proletariat 4 Such a distinction could be more easily made in practice than justi- fied in theory. If it is not exploitation for a farmer to till his own farm, does it become exploitation when he hires his son, or his nephew, or, at harvest times, a single outside helper ? An attempt to apply this distinc- tion would result in a rough discrimination against large estates, which thereupon would be parceled out into small holdings. Such an agricul- tural decentralization, however, would be very far from the old socialistic ideal. 2 Spargo, John, "Socialism, a Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles." New York (Macmillan), 1909, p. 134. 184 THE NEW DEMOCRACY and bourgeoisie are in an uncomfortable dilemma. If the proletariat does not become the overwhelming majority of the nation, but remains a minority, it cannot hope to gain its ends unaided. If, on the other hand, the city proletariat seeks the permanent adherence of small farmers, of farm laborers (with the hope of becoming farmers), of small tradesmen with some little equity in their business, of other men with a little property, it must so mitigate the origi- nal rigor of its demands as to insure these potential allies against expropriation. The owner of a five-thousand-dollar farm, covered by a two-thousand-dollar mortgage, has still a precious equity of three thousand dollars in his land. Such a farmer may be vitally interested in the control of railroad rates, elevator charges, and trust prices, but he does not approve of any social reorganization, however ultimately beneficent, which will take from him his three thousand dol- lars, or his farm and his immediate livelihood, with or with- out compensation. If, however, the private ownership of small and medium- sized farms, and of houses, live stock, and machinery on farms, be conceded, other demands for concessions will be inevitable. The small shopkeeper, with no aptitude for factory labor and with a consciousness of fulfilling a humble social service, will demand the retention of his business, which has a greater value to him than the money which it represents. Gradually the socialists will recognize that the hope of a radical industrial reorganization depends upon the assent of so large a section of the men with small prop- erty as to compel a readjustment of their social program. Such a readjustment involves a complete surrender of the old idea of expropriation, which appeals only to the already completely expropriated. The Marxian theory of surplus value had given this demand for expropriation an ethical justification. But that theory has proved untenable. We can no longer argue deductively that private ownership DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 185 \f automatically, inevitably, and always leads to exploitation.// To prove that our present distribution of income is immoral, we must base the immorality inductively on the social con- p sequences of such distribution. The whole problem of distribution ceases to be one of absolute right and becomes one of relative utility. ^ Moreover, just as the extent of the proposed expropriation must be limited by exceptions in favor of the little farm and other small properties, so the quality of expropriation is bound so to be changed as to make the very term " expro- priation" inapposite. When social utility rather than ab- stract right becomes the guidinglorce oTsocialism, the prob- lem will arise, whether a given property should be taken over or merely regulated and its profits limited; whether in another industry increased taxation, or perhaps the re- tention by the state of the future unearned increment, may not be more socially advantageous than collective ownership """v^ and operation. In short, the problem will become one of dr ways and means. The line of attack will become the line of least resistance and of greatest results. Society will seek to modify and socially utilize, rather than incontinently to destroy, our machinery of industrial organization (trusts, corporations, exchange, wage system, etc.). Progress will become adjustment by the gr adual adaptation o f production to social uses, rather than axomplete overturn, either violent or peaceful, either rapid or slow, of our industrial habits and s** implements. This process will tend to become an attrition, a wasting away, a successive attenuation of " vested rights," rather than a naked expropriation. Finally this abrasion of rights will be compelled by ah overwhelming flood of votes and an irresistible pressure of an enlightening public opinion, rather than by a class war, as the class war was formerly interpreted. It is not assumed that this complete volte-face of the Social- ist parties has already taken place. Even in countries with / 186 THE NEW DEMOCRACY universal suffrage, popular institutions, improving labor conditions, and large classes of small property holders, the change in policy has only begun ; and even the beginnings are resisted. Party leaders are usually narrow, formal, and conservative, seeking to emphasize distinctions, placing party organization and party claims above the general wel- fare. But parties, whether in power, opposition, or protest, tend to reflect the voter's perception of industrial changes; for a party without votes, however high its ideals, is not a party. The gradual (kwi&s tication of the Socialist parties, if one may use that word, is thus compelled by the view, not of the leaders, but of the. j)u^tside_masses of potentially Socialist voters. 1 1 The National (1908) Program of the Socialist party reveals the extent to which the class war doctrine has been surrendered. The class war was originally an inevitable, universal, unique, and absolutely unconditional war between proletariat and bourgeoisie, between wage earners and cap- italists, who, by the very fact of their being capitalists, were exploiters of labor. That war now becomes a softened conflict between "the workers of the nation and their allies and sympathizers of all classes" on the one side, and "a few capitalists, . . . permitted to control all the country's industrial resources," on the other. The party no longer appeals solely to men who sell their labor, but also to those who sell the products of their labor. It no longer appeals exclusively to the wageworkers or proletarians, but to the far vaguer and more inclusive groups of "workers" and "pro- ducers." A half appeal is made to "the small farmer, who 1 is to-day ex- ploited by large capital" ; to the "small manufacturer and trader, who is engaged in a desperate and losing struggle" against "concentrated capital" ; and to "even the capitalist himself (note here the meaning of "capitalist"), who is the slave of his wealth rather than its master." The goal of the party is the social ownership, not of the land and the means of production, but "of the land and the means of production used for exploitation" "The Socialist party strives to prevent land from being used for the purpose of exploitation and speculation. It demands the collective possession, con- trol, or management of land to whatever extent may be necessary to attain that end. It is not opposed to the occupation and possession of land by those using it in a useful and bona-fide manner without exploitation." In these and other directions, logic and the traditions of socialism are sacrificed to new party ideals, and the class war theory, no longer necessary, is denied in the very process of affirmation. If it be contended that the National Party Program does not represent DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 187 This incipient modification of the policy of the Socialist parties thus acquires a peculiar significance, because of the light it casts upon the tremendous, deep-lying changes in public opinion outside. That there will long remain a small group of Simon-pure, hard-shell, "stand pat" Socialist irreconcilables is as probable as that there will remain for decades groups of men hopeless of betterment. For the majority of avowed Socialists, however, to whom the general ideals, rather than the abstract philosophy or ultimate pro- gram of their party, appeal, a progressive rapprochement with other democratic elements of the population seems decreed by the logic of our development. What will be the name, badge, or token of the party, parties, or allied frag- ments of parties, which will result from such a union or ab- sorption, is insignificant. The essential tendency, however, seems to be a progress of Socialist parties towards coalescence with other democratic movements, the socialists losing many of their separatist views, while infusing the democracy as a whole with broader concepts of industrial polity. In America the old doctrine of a class war between two classes must of absolute necessity be given up by the Socialist party and must fail of adoption by other parties. The dog- matic absoluteness of the position appeals, because there is in all of us a certain primitive downrightness, which abhors gradations and qualifications and delights in sharp moral contrasts. But the facts are in flat contradiction with this oversimplified theory, and to propitiate these facts, one fat generalization after another is vainly offered up. "Capital- ism" develops elasticity. Instead of dying of its own excesses, it shows wonderful recuperative and self-reforming power. Class hatred softens as the working class strengthens, and the true attitude of socialists on the class war doctrine, the reader is re- ferred to the debates in convention. See "Proceedings of the (1908) National Convention," edited by John M. Work, Chicago (Socialist Party), 1908. (The italics are my own.) 188 THE NEW DEMOCRACY the impending clash between the classes is always delayed. The absolute socialist cries "War, War/' when there is no war. If the owners of capital were fighting for life and were now, as is alleged, in power, they might at least be tempted to restrict suffrage, censor the press, raise armies for defense, close schools, lock out workmen, stop philanthropy, and generally carry the war into the proletarian camp. Either the capitalists are as deficient in class consciousness as are the workingmen, or else the class war is a less definite thing than we have been taught to believe. What has happened is that the whole problem of the mu- tual relations of classes has moved from its old moorings, and we — all of us alike — have drifted into a new economic and, therefore, into a new psychological world. Just as the old liberalism was deaf and blind to the development which was to superimpose big business upon little business, and monopoly upon competition, so the old absolute socialism, with keener prevision, failed to realize the limitations and minor tendencies of the change, the persistence of the small farm, the survival and even the strengthening of a middle class, the material progress of the workingman, the possi- bility of alignments in the new society different from the alignment within the factory. The old laissez-faire liberal philosophy is done for, and the old absolute socialism is dying in the embrace of its dead adversary. To-day even conservatives unhesitatingly accept reforms which, a gen- eration ago, would have been decried as socialistic, while socialists in good party standing propose alliances, con- cessions, and palliatives which would formerly have been called (and by the crassly logical are still called) subversive of socialistic doctrine and inimical to the emancipation of the proletariat. The Socialist parties of to-day are caught in a bewildering transition, analogous to that of their opponents. (Indeed they scarcely realize now who are their opponents.) The DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 189 aging, dogmatic revolutionaries, who for forty years have dreamed in the dark of the hoped-for flash of lightning, are both disappointed and dazzled by the sober light of social reform. The revisionists, while adapting their views to the changed conditions, still cling desperately to a verbal allegiance to the old cramping doctrine of class war in order to distinguish themselves from the so-called bourgeois social reformers — themselves no less confused — who have ap- proached the same goal from a diametrically opposite direc tion. The socialist, who is beginning to lose his faith in the class war and the rigorous nationalization of the means of production, is adopting a theory of a democratic socializa- tion of industry and of life ; the old individualist, losing his faith in economic harmonies that do not harmonize, and in the beneficence of a competition which has gone lame, is approaching in a more tentative manner a similar theory of a democratic socialization of industry and of life. The men who were sharply sundered in interests and ideals by the conditions of the earlier machine production have been brought into partial accord by the conditions of a later machine era. The trust builder, the monopolizer, the new Titan of industry, has not only merged his factories, but united his opponents. 1 In the decades to come — during the democratic sociali- zation of America which has already begun — we shall hear less of this doctrine of the class war. There will be wide-ranging conflicts between coalitions of classes, but 1 There is a naive theory that the so-called "menace of socialism" will disappear once its doctrines are demolished. Prove that Marx's analysis of surplus value is erroneous, or that his predictions concerning agricultural concentration are false, and lo, the repentant hosts of socialism will rally about the old standards. Unfortunately for its proponents, this soothing theory contravenes the most elemental facts of social life. Heretics do not so much depend upon heresies as vice versa. Men do not become dis- contented because they have theories, but have theories because they are discontented. I h to play its part. The state, resting on soldiers and police- men, themselves resting (in democratic communities) on the acquiescence of the people, itself embodies this element of force, which is used legally when the murderer is " hanged by the neck until he is dead," or illegally when soldiers are quartered upon a peaceful population, or policemen violently break up strikes under cover of preventing vio- lence. In America an extra-legal physical force has often i THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 257 been appealed to. The North forcibly nullified the Fugitive Slave Law, as the South subsequently nullified the Four- teenth and Fifteenth Amendments. To-day lynching and other mobs set the law at naught. The greater the polit- ical corruption and the larger the rewards of violence, the more frequent is the appeal to force. Fortunately, in all advanced nations the rule of brute force in the fixing of the balance of power is diminishing. As conditions become more settled, the physical force of the state becomes so superior to that of any group (not a majority) within the state as to render revolt on the plane of mere violence impracticable. In well-organized states the day of sporadic uprisings, of impromptu revolutions, is probably over. The modern organization of warfare favors the status quo. Effective arms have become too costly and too difficult of conceal- ment to be held by the unorganized people. Barricades are built of cobbles; the modern streets are built of as- phalt. To-day the deadly, state-owned cannon would sweep through the wide, straight, unobstructed avenues, as the old cannon could not through the narrow, crooked, barricaded lanes of the olden city. The organized powers in the community hold the railroad, telegraph, and tele- phone. The state fights on inside lines. It can concen- trate all loyal forces against a disaffected minority. It can mobilize millions in the briefest time. It is becoming recognized, also, that violence is a clumsy, two-edged sword, which ultimately destroys him who wields it. A social group, compelled to use force against other sections of the community, finds itself a prey to the most vio- lent of its own members. Violence is not constructive. It is ugly. It alienates supporters and unites opponents, for, after all, civilization, with all its residual brutality, is squeamish about the sight of blood. Finally, we are coming into an intellectual, statistical age, where men know 258 THE NEW DEMOCRACY beforehand when they are beaten; where potential force, or the show of force, takes the place of force itself. Physi- cal force remains always in the background as the ulti- mate determinant — as the weapon which must be used when votes and ideas fail, when a people without rights are opposed, as in Russia to-day, by a clique without vision, conscience, or humanity. In civilized communities, how- ever, and especially in communities already advancing in democracy, force becomes of less immediate moment. Our national wealth, present and prospective, is our chief guarantee that the social problem will not needs be resolved by a thrust of the sword. The richer the commu- nity, the greater is the cost of internal strife, and the more futile any policy which drives men to arms. The vastness of the wealth to be conserved makes even our revolutionaries somewhat conservative, for there is small wisdom in lay- ing waste a city in which the victors must forevermore dwell. The victorious socialists of Milwaukee, but recently dreaded as iconoclasts, turn out to be constructive, con- ciliatory, Chesterfieldian, and enormously effective. Our most possessing classes are equally afraid of violence, not because it is likely to be successful, but because of the damage which would be inflicted before the bull could be driven from the china shop. They are therefore willing (as they are also able) to insure against the utter reckless- ness of misery by allaying the worst evils of poverty; just as the democratic masses are willing (and able) to refrain from recklessness because of the counter-recklessness which it would provoke, and because of the injury to their ultimate possessions which it would inflict. In America we can for the time being lay this specter of violence. What might happen if certain nation-debas- ing tendencies, now at work, were to overcome counteract- ing forces, what might happen if misery and oppression grew with the growth of wealth, is another question. For THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 259 the day it is easier to vote and easier to get your vote counted than it is to fight, and curative forces are leading away from the sharp antagonism which would involve an appeal to naked force. To-day, when our soldiers under arms repre- sent less than one per thousand of the population, when our militia are loosely and not undemocratically organized, our broader democratic movements will in all probability neither rely upon force nor be resisted by force. 1 Not only is it probable (though not certain) that our democratic progress will be unaccompanied by a clash of armed* men but the process is also more likely, because of our accumulated wealth, to be a social upbuilding from within rather than a demolition with a subsequent recon- struction. It is common to-day to see a vast railway sta- tion completely rebuilt, while, simultaneously, the traffic is carried on. So necessary is continuity when enormous interests are involved, that change, destruction, rebuild- ing do not interfere with the ordinary conduct of the busi- ness. Our social revolution must be consummated with a minimum of shock to our delicate industrial, political, and social machinery. Moreover, all progress must be built upon the foundations of our stored wealth. Just as the Christian churches were fashioned of the mar- ble of pagan temples, so our. new world must be built upon the accumulations of the past. Our social reconstruction must be effected during business hours. It must be ac- 1 The above statement is, of course, only general, and is perfectly con- sistent with instances in the past and the future, of the use of force by strikers, by employers, and by the State or nation in the interest of em- ployers. In Colorado the conflict between mine owners and mine laborers resulted in bribery, intimidation, assassination, and a state of affairs which might be likened to a labor war. There have been numerous instances of the use of police, armed detectives, private constabulary, the militia, and the federal troops, against strikers. It is probable, however, that the num- ber of men killed and injured during all the labor conflicts since the Civil War is very much less than the number killed or maimed every six months in the ordinary legally murderous course of industry. 260 THE NEW DEMOCRACY companied by preliminary plans, specifications, and esti- mates of cost. It must be gradual and quiet, though rapid. Nor is it inevitable that the progress of democracy will involve a wholesale confiscation of the property of the rich. Where wealth is growing at a rapid rate, the multitude may be fed without breaking into the rich man's granary; the lowly may be exalted without a pecuniary abasement of those of high degree. In the early days of poverty all conflicts meant the taking of some men's property by others. War was a business for profit, as were slave-raiding and piracy. The army lived on the spoils of the enemy or the lands of the people which it defended. A palace revolution, an attainder for treason, even a national struggle for religious supremacy, were influenced by the desire to secure the property of indi- viduals or classes. A revolution faced the necessity of paying its way at the expense of the defeated. To-day the rapid growth of the national wealth has cut the bond between social progress and confiscation. Our hope of a greater national wealth is a promise that we may enrich the whole population without impoverishing any one. Compared to the stupendous totals of our coming accumu- lations, the cost of progress is small. Had we in 1861 paid dollar for dollar for the slaves, we could within a decade have easily extinguished the resulting debt. If in 1880 New York City had bought a few hundred square miles of territory in her vicinity, or had Pennsylvania bought her coal mines, or Minnesota her ore beds, the operation would have redounded so enormously to the public benefit as to have rendered the alternative of confiscation unthink- able. If to-day the nation were to buy up its railroads and run them efficiently, the mere accretion in value during the next generation or two would make the purchase so profitable that the collective people could well afford to pay a fair price. So, generally, the stupendous present THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 261 values of monoplies, which the nation may in the near future be compelled to take over, will seem ridiculously small fifty or a hundred years hence. What Belgium, Portugal, Italy, or Hungary, — nations with a lesser and a less sure future, — cannot afford to do, America is abun- dantly able to accomplish. The growing wealth of America is sufficient to permit our social transformations being car- ried through with a minimum of disappointment to the more moderate anticipations even of monopolists. Social appropriation without confiscation, however, in- volves a transformation much less likely to be violently resisted and much more likely to be actively welcomed. The social surplus thus makes for social peace. In the last analysis, the wars of all the ages have been wars of poverty. The dream of peace between nations, and of peace within nations, did not flourish until society had the prospect of enough to go around. Only to a certain extent is the evolution of democracy^ in America a social conflict. Partly this democracy will come automatically through growth and enlightenment ; partly it will be willingly conceded; partly it will be con- tested inch by inch. Where the road to democracy runs through the wide fields of social harmony — those fertile fields where practically all social groups may be educated to acknowledge identical interests — no fighting is necessar^N^ Only where the progress is one in which the gain of the \ democracy is the loss of a privileged, powerful class must \ there result a conflict, allayed by successive compromises, / but ultimately fought out to a conclusion. ^j These three elements of democratic progress, conflict, growth, and education are not always separate, even in thought. Fighting may involve growth. On the other hand, a relatively more rapid growth and a conse- quent physical crowding out of rivals is one form of con- flict between social groups, as between plants, animals, 262 THE NEW DEMOCRACY and nations. Japan had to defeat Russia in order to grow large enough in Korea to resist Russia. The United States, had she not bought Florida in 1819, would in the course of a century have so overgrown the sparse Spanish settle- ments as to have made a continuance of Spanish domination in that peninsula unthinkable. The overwhelming at the polls of obstructive forces is an instance of democratic prog- ress through conflict, as are also industrial concessions extorted through strikes. On the other hand, we grow into democ- racy or are educated into democracy through uncontested victories, through sheer technical progresses, improved political and industrial education, through an increased capacity for combined activity, through an enlarged social consciousness, through a widened social outlook. The mere expansion of the trade-union * movement in England, Germany, and America; the growth of the socialist party in Germany; the spread of the coopera- tive movement in Belgium; the popularization of edu- cation in the United States; the development in Amer- ica of a spirit of insurgency against respectable and bepraised evils, are all steps toward the attainment of democracy, independently of the actual use of such movements in eventual social conflicts. In a certain sense, these conflicts themselves constitute less a class struggle than a national adjustment. In this adjustment the mutual attractions and repulsions of social groups play their part, but so great is the potential over- weight of the democratic mass — once a strong solidarity is achieved — that victory depends not on the people's ability to fight, but on their capacity to unite. What hampers the democracy is not the actual, visible power of an intrenched plutocracy, but the lack of an intellectual perception to unite divergent classes ; the lack of an emo- tional appeal to overcome the divisive forces within the majority itself. The democracy is halted by its fear that THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 263 it cannot run its own business ; by its very own conserva- tism. It is this inherent, though curable, timorousness, this social paralysis, as well as a tendency to split up into its constituent groups, rather than any outside constraining force, which in the past has delayed our democratic progress and has confined us to the ruts of a traditional thinking and 7 voting. / The internal adjustment of the democracy is a process /of uniting groups, by no means agreed in the details of \what constitutes progress. We have "semidemocrats," with " leanings" or tendencies toward certain democratic reforms, but opposed to others. For this reason (and it is an outstanding reason) we are forced to content ourselves with half-reforms, especially when the half-successes are the earnest of further successes. Men opposed to the regula- tion of corporations will support ballot reform and direct primaries, and men who would bitterly fight a progressive income tax will support a corporation law. All these " semidemocrats' ' are utilized by the advancing demo- cratic movement. Democracy hitches on behind even when Vthe wagon does not go the whole way. The democracy proceeds along a middle path, which is ^the line of least resistance. It uses broad phrases, vague enough to attract by different hopes men who are dis- satisfied with only the details of our national economy, as well as those who wish a basic change in business and politics. The democracy, seeking ever to appeal to a majority, recasts its doctrines to attain that majority. It does not favor confiscation, because its own majority has property. 1 But it does attack " swollen" fortunes (which belong to the minority), as it attacks the monopoly which 1 There is, of course, no clear boundary line to confiscation, and it is a matter of degree and opinion where taxation, reasonable regulation, or fair payment end and confiscation begins. Our courts have been wholly unable to give any logical and universally applicable definition of con- fiscation. 264 THE NEW DEMOCRACY leads to them, the "special privilege" which increases them, the unequal, or evaded, taxation which conserves them, and the business secrecy and business oligarchy which make them perpetual. The democracy does not permit the issue to become one between the propertied and the un- propertied, but distinguishes between property and privilege, between earned, and unearned, increment; between legiti- mate investment and promoters' profits. By taking this line of least resistance, the democracy finds allies where a more uncompromising group would find enemies. Men who are dependent on an industry, work- men and stockholders alike, do not necessarily desire an autocratic rule within the industry. The policyholders of the great insurance companies — the real investors — are benefited, not injured, by an effective governmental con- trol. In the same spirit the democracy stops short, at least temporarily, of doing more than the immediately necessary. The government regulates interstate railroad traffic and other businesses affected with a public interest, and, as the need becomes apparent, control by the nation becomes more complete. But the democracy is not so impracticable as to wish to regulate the tillage of the inde- pendent farmer, the hours of labor of the doctor or lawyer, the capitalization and profits of the corner grocery store. The goal of the democracy is a maximum of control with a .minimum of regulation. In other words, the democracy, not being slavishly bound to logic, would rather be successful than thorough. It does not tear up root and branch, but merely weeds out roughly, for social, like natural, evolution permits the sur- vival of harmless rudiments. Just as the vestige of a pre- human tail survives in the human coccyx, so we have, and always will have, a social coccyx, a social vermiform appen- dix, and other reminders of a lower past. America will always be a jumble of old and new, of " Yankee notions" THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 265 in government and business and the political junk of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We need not im- mediately slough off social beliefs and institutions when they cease to be visibly useful, just as we may still speak of Thursday after ceasing to believe in the great god Thor. 1 In its gradual and progressive adjustment, the com- promising and conciliatory democracy enjoys the advantage of being opposed by a cautious plutocracy. Just as the most dangerous fencer is the novice whose feints and sallies are unpredictable, so the most dangerous social opponent is the class driven by ignorance and cowardice into the most desperate ventures. Though the plutocracy is cautious and comfortable, it often acts the r61e of a hard-driven, desperate antagonist. The road to democracy is scarred with "last ditches." As the people advance, the receding plutocracy cries fran- tically, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther," and occa- sionally when a particularly inexcusable attempt is made to subordinate the national business to the nation, the plutocracy, in the outraged dignity of a tragedy queen, cries out aloud, "Another step forward, and I die." In reality, the plutocracy never dies. The railroads do not cease running; the refineries do not cease refining; the public service corporation, "swearing she will ne'er con- sent," consents. If the railroads were to close up shop, they would take the bread and butter from the mouths of millions of American citizens. It would be a terrible example. But to whom ? The democracy in the course of its instructive victories and its equally instructive defeats learns that the surest 1 The metempsychosis of kings from arrogant tyrants to domesticated national pets and, incidentally, democratic advisers, illustrates how skill- fully a democracy can adapt an old form to a new end. A Henry the Seventh, a James the Second, even a George the Third, would be an un- thinkable anachronism in the England of to-day, but a George the Fifth is a national asset, as the Lord Mayor or the Tower of London is an asset. 266 THE NEW DEMOCRACY method of progress is to take one step after another. The first step, often uncontested (because it is only one step), /leads inevitably to others. Democratic progress is succes- ' '* sive, not simultaneous. The steps once taken are progressively easy. For ex- ample, the retention and exploitation by the federal gov- ernment of the resources of Alaska would disappoint only a small number of prospective millionaires, while it would not only give the government an immensely increased wealth, but might serve as an opening wedge for other wide-branch- ing programs of reform. If the billions of potential wealth in Alaska were to be devoted — let us say — to the subsidy of our national education, we should be a wiser nation thirty years hence. So, a purely "voluntary" federal incorpora- tion law would doubtless lead to an efficient compulsory incorporation law which would eventually insure a control over the most recondite operations of all great corporations. A minimum tax on inheritances contains the germ of a definite prohibition of insanely large accumulations. A merely nominal tax upon our coal reserves involves eventu- ally the end of the forestalling of our natural resources. There are mineral lands worth, to-day, a few hundreds of millions, which fifty or a hundred years hence will be worth billions of dollars. If the nation could approach the owners of these lands with the sword of a gentle tax in the one hand and the olive branch of a fair purchase price in the other, there would soon be no fear of any monopoly of our mineral resources. As the government can unobtrusively enter the tent of business, so the people without proclamations or fireworks can enter into control of the state. The time will come when the Constitution will be made easily amendable by the people. Until this is accomplished, however, the simplest way, whenever an alteration of the Constitution is essential to progress, is to persuade the people, who elect THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 267 the President and the Senators, who choose the Supreme Court judges, that the proposed change is in the public interest, and therefore is in harmony with the putative intent of the framers of the document. If in the full swing and current of a victorious democratic movement a ma- jority of judges, imbued with popular ideas, would interpret a single clause of the Constitution in a sense often con- tended for, but never as yet accepted by the courts, the door would be opened to a complete democratization of our whole political and economic system. 1 Political, like eco- nomic, reforms lead the way to others of the same kind. A voluntary and partial regulation of party primaries leads within a few years to a compulsory and state-wide direct primary. A restricted application of the principle of refer- endum and initiative leads to its universal and unrestricted adoption. Extra-legal arrangements, such as the direct election of United States Senators, completely alter our fundamental constitutional system, without touching the Constitution. It is progress step by step. It is progress by indirection. It is a successful flank movement, instead of a brave, but suicidal, frontal attack. 1 The clause consists of the italicized words in the following sentence from the eighth section of the first article. "Congress shall have power : To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.' 7 The courts have always interpreted these final words, not as an independ- ent grant of power, but as a statement of purposes for the levying of taxes, and, as such, a condition or limitation of the grant, "to lay and collect taxes," etc. But the courts have, before this, changed their interpretations and forced new meanings upon old words. The grant to Congress of the right to "provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," coupled with the right "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers," would wipe away practically all restrictions upon our federal legislative bodies. It is not here contended that such a judicial decision would be entirely desirable in the present state of public opinion and political capacity, but in the years to come, either this or some other interpretation having a similar broadening effect is more probable than is the attainment of the same end by direct amendments to the Constitution under our present system of amending. 268 THE NEW DEMOCRACY By such indirect means, which, after all, are the means naturally adopted by the people, even a revolution may be "safe, sane, and conservative.' ' We may change the very bases of our government, law, and business ; we may jump the hurdles of the Constitution, and may circumvent the obstacles of a mass of antiquated judicial decisions, while walking along the paths of legality and constitutionalism, and abjuring all get-there-quick methods and all violent conflicts with our historic past. A wound, to kill a man, need not be "so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door" ; a pin thrust at the right spot will serve. So, if we are to end a long list of industrial and political evils, we need not attack property, which is to attack the majority. We need not evoke a class war, which is a war of the weak against the strong. We need not take all the unearned in- crement, which we may find in our own farms and in our own single shares of stock. We need not cure everything at once. We may take step by step, as the chance pre- sents itself. In the working out of such a policy of successive actions and of well-considered delays, time and technical progress often work on the side of the democracy. When electricity supplanted horses on the street cars, the cities, aided by the States, had an opportunity of practically retaking their old franchises by refusing to permit to the old lines the use of the new traction, while at the same time offering the companies a fair price for their rusty rails. So, to-day, when the rights of way into the center of cities have given certain railroads an enormous monopoly value, 1 a new opportunity is afforded to the city, State, or nation to secure an underground entrance for new railroads run under the city streets. In every generation our inventors discover a virgin continent, and the new vast resources, 1 For example, the New York Central's route into New York, the Pennsylvania's into Philadelphia, and the Illinois Central's into Chicago. THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 269 thus thrown into the public's lap, may be utilized, wasted, or monopolized. Usually they are wasted or given to favorites. The occasional sparks of social prevision shine out in a black infinity of utter governmental thriftlessness "like a good deed in a naughty world." But we are slowly learning. In the future we shall better know how to lay our corporate hands upon the things which science and invention throw our way. Our progress, though gradual, must be rapid. We dare not make a virtue of slowness, nor exalt the snail as the only true reformer. Just as they who surrender themselves to celestial Utopias cease to care for progress upon a too, too solid earth, so they who content themselves with walking, when they might run or fly, see the long years pass without worthy progress. In our political and indus- trial world, as in Looking Glass Land, you must run very fast indeed merely to remain where you are. Democratic progress, moreover, must be coordinated, pre- ._/ pared, tested. It must consist of necessary links in an increasingly visible chain. The advantage of gradual reform is that it permits a sort of psychological acclimatization on the part of the reformed. But for a policy to be truly graduated, it must possess an inherent unity. It must not be a choppy, disjointed, and spasmodic succession of un- corrected social efforts. It does not hurt a dog less to cut its tail off by inches, nor a corporation less to subject it gradually to a dozen successive criminal prosecutions. No merely sporadic action, whether it be an "exposure/' a tirade, a punitive fine, or an exemplary jail sentence, can effect much permanent good, and a series of sporadic actions does not constitute a graduated reform. The democracy, though compromising in action, must be uncompromising in principle. Though conciliatory towards opponents, it must be constant to its fixed ideals. Though it tack with the wind, it must keep always in sight its general destination. ( 270 THE NEW DEMOCRACY What the democracy needs is a consistent and constructive policy, changed from time to time as new exigencies or new interpretations of social facts require, but carried out un- flinchingly, and realized as opportunities permit. A policy of single steps is desirable only when each step leads to other steps, not yet practicable, but at least dimly fore- seeable. Finally, the democracy, in its forward march, must keep ( a watchful eye to the rear. It must promote a constant Vcohesion within its ranks. It must abate internal strife. It must gather an ever increasing number of recruits from the still unawakened but potentially democratic masses. Whatever else its tactics be, the democratic movement must keep pace with the masses of its probable supporters, marching just far enough ahead to be able to lead. To proceed at a much faster rate than the psychological develop- ment of the mass is to court a swift and powerful reaction. More than anything else the democratic movement must maintain harmony among its groups. Social cooperation, which is the goal of democracy, is also its weapon. J The goal of internal harmony is more easily recognized than attained, and it is often more difficult to conciliate an ally than to defeat an enemy. The various subgroups of democrats and semidemocrats have divergent, and even antagonistic, interests. The workman has his sharp con- flict with his employer, and he cannot afford, in furthering his general interests (those which he has in common with the business man), to surrender his special claims. The social surplus, so largely monopolized by the plutocracy, is a splendid prize in itself, and herein the proletariat, like other groups, has "a world to gain. ,, But in giving their adherence to the democratic alliance, the workingmen, like other social groups, are entitled to a quid pro quo. Even more divisive than these divergent interests of sub- groups are the varying philosophies and the often startling * THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 271 idiosyncrasies of rival democratic leaders. A witty abo- litionist once declared that to free the slaves, an all-wise Providence had chosen as His instruments people whom she would not touch with a ten-foot pole. Among democrats — as also among Methodists, single-taxers, stammerers, and longshoremen — there are wise and foolish, temperate » and fanatic. There is the Quixotic genius, who eats up his energy in friction, and through very excess of zeal is thrown off tangentially into the frigid void of indifference. There are others of a more lethargic temperament, who live in a quiet connubial commerce with their ideals, neither demand- ing much nor failing often. There are people immersed in the pettiest of preoccupations, who nevertheless " catch" democracy as they catch influenza, and who rise to the surface because o? their low specific gravity. These con- stitutionally hostile people, though hating the same thing, do not always love each other, and many serious difficul- ties arise from temperamental misconceptions and from the lack of an emotional appeal or of an intellectual insight powerful enough to overturn these psychological barriers. A still heavier burden upon the democratic movement is the residual inertness of the mass. In part this is a defect of education, for knowledge is desire, and men want when they see. Outside the groups of men who are always or generally on the side of democracy, however, there is that wide fringe of indifferent men and women, who lack the leisure, the education, or the social conscience to see public problems other than vaguely and intermittently, and who oppose a sluggish resistance to the realization even of their own perceived advantages. The men who are harried by the quest of bread and butter and automobiles; who are intellectually withered through brainless overwork; who are ground up between the millstones of a feverish money- getting and a feverish money-spending ; the men who are 272 THE NEW DEMOCRACY immersed in the most transient and insignificant of events, tend to lose sight entirely of their share in large public matters. In this respect, in its being compelled to carry the im- pedimenta of a long accumulated indifference, the wide democratic movement of to-day may be compared with the woman's suffrage movement, which is one of its symptoms. The movement for the political emancipation of women suffers less from active antagonism than from the inertness of many women to whom it should appeal. The move- ment, when successful, will but slightly affect the distribu- tion of political and economic power, because the lines of \social cleavage do not largely parallel sex lines, and men will gain much more than they will lose from this extension of the suffrage. In the same way, the antisuflfragists, far from being the opponents, are the real, though innocent, coadjutors of the suffragists. The antisuffrage movement, though it wanders rather forlornly in alien thoroughfares, is, after all, like the suffrage movement, an unmistakable sign of an awakened social consciousness among women. The antisufifragists — those strident declaimers for quietude, those able defenders of women's most cherished disabilities — are sprung, after all, from the identical soil as their pro- gressive sisters. The "anti's" will convince all that some women are politically capable, and that some are politically ambitious, and, even more effectively than the suffragists, they will prove that the bonds which have so long gagged and blinded and hobbled the half of humanity are being one by one and forever broken. The real opponents of woman's right to vote are not our energetic though somnam- \bulistic "anti's," but the great sluggish mass of pleasant, politically unawakened women, the psychologically sub- merged. 1 1 Antagonism is often a more fertile field for propaganda than indiffer- ence, for the will to combat is not always so different from the will to be- THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 273 To unite those who are already acknowledged demo- crats, and to enlist those who do not yet know or care what they are, a long continued campaign of education is necessary. This education includes the learning of the schools and colleges and that also of the newspaper, maga- zine, book, play, sermon, factory, street, railroad, market, and city. It involves a breaking of the tablets of conserv- atism ; a freeing of the mind from political and economic fetish worship, and the cultivation of a popular receptivity for new ideas. Our old notions, not our corporeal enemies, enslave us. We must throw over the old cramping maxims of days of poverty. We must throw over our conceptions of cost and value (which measure wealth by effort) and must accept new ideas of utility (which measure wealth by pleasure and satisfaction). We must recognize that we have the social wealth to cure our social evils — and that until we have turned that social wealth against poverty, crime, vice, disease, incapacity, and ignorance, we have not begun to attain democracy. We must change our attitude towards government, towards business, towards reform, towards philanthropy, towards all the facts immediately or remotely affecting our industrial and political life. Such an educa- tion of its own members, present and prospective, must be a necessary part of a democratic campaign. One might well fear for a democratic organization which contained so many diverse and conflicting elements ; which comprised such irreconcilable personalities ; which depended upon so inert an outside mass; and which was forced to educate to new and revolutionary concepts so many listless millions of traditionally-minded people. Without undue skepticism, one might fear that a movement which lieve. There often seems more hope of radical action from a rabid reac- tionary than from a contented conservative, because the reactionary, though he moves backwards, at least moves. T 274 THE NEW DEMOCRACY is merely the resultant of constantly changing social forces might fail to eventuate, or might succumb to its obstacles. Nevertheless, while people are proclaiming that demo- cratic progress is impossible, it is already upon us. While we are being shown by diagram that the people cannot even tell what democracy is, we need only look out of our window to see them actually achieving democracy. Babies learn to eat before they know the muscles of the alimentary canal or the chemistry of the digestive juices, and men learn to unite without seeing or knowing their allies, and to march stolidly without clearly seeing their goal. To-day the democratic army, united by the loosest >onds, and subjected to the most attenuated discipline, is moving along three wide roads to a common but not clearly perceived goal. These three roads are the democratization of government, the socialization of industry, and the civili- zation of the citizen. These roads meet and cross and iterwine, and the various contingents join and separate, and again join and again separate, while, all the time, the army, stretching out far into the distance, approaches nearer to its goal. The men in the rear, marching partly through an inertia x)f motion, partly through imitation of the men ahead, occasionally desert and again reenlist. They see only vaguely the outlines of the country to which they are marching. But with each advance their view becomes clearer and with each new day the habit of marching and the instinct of fellowship with the men ahead increase. Occasionally great bodies, attracted by new leaders, branch off into side paths, which seem shorter and straighter, and some of these detachments are lost, and some, by occupy- ing cross paths, obstruct the passage of the main army; while others, by still marching, once more strike the com- mon road and thus rejoin their comrades. Gradually the army, though composed of many detachments led by many THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 275 generals, becomes somewhat more unified. Gradually, as many men coming from many places converge on common points, the three broad roads of the march, the roads of democratic government, of socialized industry, and of a civilized people, become clearly marked highways. CHAPTER XVII THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY THE industrial goal of the democracy is the socializa- tion of industry. It is the attainment by the people of the largest possible industrial control and of the largest possible industrial dividend. The democracy seeks to attain these ends through government ownership of indus- try ; through government regulation ; through tax reform ; through a moralization and reorganization of business in the interest of the industrially weak. Everywhere we find evidences of industrial developments in the general direction of this goal. Government goes into business. The Post Office embarks upon the banking busi- ness and threatens to engage in the express business. The Forestry Bureau raises and sells timber. The Reclamation Service goes into many separate businesses in connection with the building of dams and the selling of water. In the construction of the Panama Canal, the government builds roads and railroads and conducts dozens of separate enter- prises. At the same time, the States and cities greatly extend the sphere of their direct participation in business, and buy and manufacture and sell on an enlarging scale. Government regulation grows simultaneously. It extends over more industries, and over more operations of industries. Railroad regulation, both by the nation and by some thirty States, becomes wider. Railroad rates, services, account- ing come within the purview of State and national regula- tion. A corporation tax law marks the beginning of a wider investigation of all corporation actions. A Bureau of Corporations and a Tariff Board demand explicit infor- 276 THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 277 mation concerning manufacturing and selling concerns. Factory and labor laws regulate the internal economy of businesses. Pure food laws, postal laws, corporation laws, etc., regulate business from the points of view of consumer and investor. A federal incorporation law is proposed with the idea of subjecting all corporations doing an interstate business to the control of the federal government. Still other developments reveal this democratic goal. Our public lands, mines, and water powers are reserved for the people instead of being indiscriminately given away, as formerly. A strongly antagonistic attitude towards " swollen fortunes" is revealed, and proposals are made to reduce these swellings by heavy taxes, and to use the powers of taxation generally to lessen economic inequalities. Trade- unions with tens of thousands of members claim a partial control of industry, and the general community asserts its right to participate in the settlement of industrial disputes. A new insistence is laid upon the social interest in all mani- festations of our industrial life. The broad outlines of the democracy's industrial pro- gram, so far as they have reached the general conscious- ness, are to be found in the promises and declamations of the platforms of our political parties. These platforms are for the most part insincere, but it is exactly their insincerity which gives them their evidential value. A platform does not show what the politician wants, but does show what that astute person believes that the people want. It is the tribute, often the sole tribute, which the candidate pays to the popular wish. The platform's ambiguities are equally enlightening. Nothing reveals more clearly the presence, and even the relative strength, of two opposed forces in society than do the platform's nicely balanced sentences, in which two warring clauses reduce each other to an in- nocuous meaninglessness. The superlative value of the platform as evidence is due 278 THE NEW DEMOCRACY to the fact that it is always addressed to a potential ma- jority. All platforms (Republican, Democratic, Socialist, Prohibition) appeal to "the masses," to "the many," to "the people." Thus the 1909 tariff is denounced by the Democratic State (1910) platforms because it oppresses "the many for the benefit of the few" (Alabama) ; because "it plunders the many to enrich the few" (Michigan) ; because it imposes "added burdens upon the toiling and consuming masses" (Colorado), while building "up great fortunes for a favored few" (Connecticut) ; because it has made heavier "the burdens of the consuming masses" (Georgia) ; thus "involving remorseless exactions from the many to enrich the few" (Indiana), and so on through all the States. For the protection of the many against the few, the trusts are assailed, the conservation of natural re- sources is approved, and the adoption of the income tax amendment is urged. All of which solicitude for "the many" is explicable, since while "the favored few" often rule the party, it is "the many" who furnish the votes. 1 The most characteristic feature of the industrial pro- gram of the democracy, as revealed in party platforms and in books, newspapers, and speeches, as well as in actual legislation, is the emphasis which is laid upon the state in industry. Government ownership and regulation — national, State, and local — are urged for more and more industries. The dividend from industry, which people are demanding, is more largely a joint than an individual dividend. It is a dividend which the individual citizen can obtain only 1 "The two dominant political parties," says the New York State Socialist Platform of 1910, "pretend to stand for all the people; the so- called reform parties claim to speak for the good people ; the Socialist party frankly acknowledges that it is concerned chiefly with the working people." Since, however, all the working people of the State are the chief concern of the party, and since it aligns "those who toil" against "those who prey," and "those who are robbed" against "those who rob," it may also be considered to be broad in its platform appeal. THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 279 through the intermediation of the State or nation ; in other words, through an extension of State control over industry. 1 What the democracy desires, however, is not government ownership for itself, but merely enough government owner- ship, regulation, or control as may be necessary to a true socialization of industry. The democracy's goal — the so- cialization of industry — is a viewing of our manifold busi- ness life from the standpoint of society and not solely from \r that of the present beneficiaries or directors of industry. It is such a coordination of business as will permanently give the greatest happiness and the highest development to the larg- est number of individuals, and to society as a whole. Socialization is thus a point of view. It is less a definite industrial program than the animating ideal of a whole industrial policy. It is a standard by which industrial conditions and industrial developments must be adjudged. Jn certain industries socialization may involve a govern- ment monopoly. In others, it may mean government opera- tion in competition with private businesses,; or a govern- ment ownership with private management ; or a division of the profits of private industries. Or it may involve a thoroughgoing regulation of an industry, prescribing rates, prices, services, wages, hours, labor conditions, dividends, and the internal economy in general. Or, socialization may mean a lesser regulation ; or mere publicity ; or encourage- ment; or subsidies; or legal recognition; or simply the prescribing of a minimum capital or of a preliminary train- ing. Again, socialization may mean a deflection of the stream of wealth which flows from an industry, a deflection accomplished by tax laws, or by laws altering the conditions 1 The old cry, "Vote yourself a farm," represented an individualistic point of view. It was the man's share of a divisible and alienable public domain that was wanted ; not his joint share in an indivisible thing, such as a public library, a public park, improved educational facilities, etc. 280 THE NEW DEMOCRACY of conveying property. Finally, socialization may be accomplished without direct governmental regulation. How far the government shall interfere depends on the business. An insurance company, to which people who are not actuaries give money now that their widows may receive money fifty years hence, requires a different regulation from the business of the corner tailor, who presses your coat while you wait. Because it is not restricted as to means, socialization may effect itself without a million minute rules. To-day each of our ninety-two million citizens is enjoined against thousands of crimes and misdemeanors and against thousands of pos- sible violations of the property rights of each of his ninety- two million neighbors. And yet, most of us obey the law without thinking. In many industries profit seeking (with certain broad restrictions and encouragements) will result in a substantial socialization. A few hundreds of millions a year intelligently spent on agricultural and general edu- cation, on experiment stations, on public roads, etc., would do more to effect a better socialization of agriculture than a fifty- volume code of agricultural law. Nor does socialization involve the negation of profits. The love of gain is a tough and wholesome human fiber. It is the crude motive power of industry. Socialization considers profit seeking neither as a universally beneficent regulative impulse nor as the stubborn root of all industrial 1 evils. It regards profits and wages as contributions to a larger end, to be balanced as such against other results of the industry. If a given industry creates on the whole an excess of costs over utilities, or if it affords a smaller surplus of utilities than would the same amount of capital and labor invested otherwise, then it is within the province of society to reform, or even to abolish the industry. 1 1 If society, without warning, prohibits actions and business methods which it formerly encouraged or tolerated, there may be a fair question as to whether employers and workmen, suffering losses from such unantici- THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 281 Socialization considers industry as a whole. The national \ business is "one and indivisible" ; an indissoluble union of autonomous, but linked, industries. 1 In emphasizing this oneness of business, socialization is doing on a large scale and from the point of view of society what the trust did on a smaller scale from the point of view of the profit-taker. Like the trust, socialization subjects rival or dissimilar businesses to the sway of a single aim. Like the trust, socialization attains unity without sacrificing variety. The trust does not always end the separate ex- istence of constituent companies. So, under a complete ^ socialization of our national industry, we would have thou- sands of separate kinds of business under different forms of ownership, management, and control, but each continuing its existence and mode of life because adapted, in the opinion of society, to contribute its share to the best progress of industry as a whole. — -"^ Like the trust, also, socialization does not end competition. The trust encourages internal competition. The right hand is stimulated to do better than the left, and the left to excel the right. The factory manager who attains a greater output or a lest cost per unit of product than rival managers is appropriately recompensed. It is a "personally conducted'' competition, which differs from the competition outside the trust (the industrial helium omnium contra omnes) as the Prince Charles spaniel differs from his savage cousin, the gray wolf. Similarly, socialization relies upon competition, pated prohibition, may not justly claim compensation. The essential point of socialization, however, is not this eventual compensation, but the right, reserved and exercised by society, of determining, in last resort, what things may be produced and how. 1 There is a theory of business which is diametrically opposed to indus- trial socialization. This theory, which we may call industrial autonomy, considers the national economy as a series of largely unconnected industrial parts, each the province of the people actually engaged in it. It regards industrial enterprises as international law regards the nations, — as sov- ereign bodies, with the internal affairs of which no one may meddle. 282 THE NEW DEMOCRACY which educates and steels competitors, though it opposes competition which injures the contestants or others. 1 In actual fact socialization, in so far as it involves the actual intervention of the state, is used largely to supple- ment or correct competition. It is where competition is atrophied, as in the case of monopolies, or where it appears in a pathological form, as in child labor, industrial parasitism, etc., that the intervention of the state is most needed. Especially is this true of monopolies. "Where monopoly is inevitable,' ' says the Wisconsin Republican Platform of 1910, "we favor complete government regulation." The Illinois Democrats are in favor of an extension of the govern- mental policy of conservation, because they "are opposed to the gobbling up of the mines, the forests, the oil fields, and the water-power sites of the country by the greedy repre- sentatives of Big Business." All through our political literature runs the attack upon "monopolies," "the trusts and monopolies," "the corporate trusts," "certain corpora- tions and combinations of capital." 2 One reason for the government ownership or regulation 1 This distinction between social and antisocial competition is empha- sized by trade-union leaders in their defense of minimum conditions. They argue that the competitive battle should be fought out along the socially advantageous lines of directive genius, improved factory organization, the installation of better machinery, and not along the socially disadvantageous lines of a lowering of wages, a lengthening of hours, a worsening of condi- tions, or an exploitation of the labor of little children. The end of the lower competition is the sweatshop ; that of the higher is that wonderful series of inventions which cannot be utilized except when labor is sufficiently intelligent and sufficiently rewarded. 2 While it is impossible to draw an absolute distinction between com- petitive industries and monopolies (since there is an appreciable monopoly element in businesses usually called competitive, and an appreciable com- petitive element in most of our so-called monopolies), still, in the majority of cases, we can tell roughly whether the industry is preponderatingly com- petitive or monopolistic. On the whole, a competitive industry is one in which any person or corporation possessing a moderate capital is able to produce the product at approximately equal advantage with the majority of the persons already engaged in the industry. i THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 283 of monopolies is that, unregulated, they lead to an absorption by small groups of too large a share of the social surplus. Under the old theory of competition, such a business hyper- trophy was impossible, because high profits would attract new competitors and profits would fall. But to-day com- petition is aborted, and shares more modestly with monopoly the rule of the industrial world. We cannot trust to com- petition to reduce the monopoly profits of the anthracite carrying railroads, just as we cannot afford to throw our- selves upon the " enlightened selfishness" of these corpora- tions. Hitherto our federal government has lagged far behind the governments of western Europe in the matter of direct ownership and management of businesses. Such progress as has been made along these lines has taken the form of a gradual growth of functions already exercised. The government has enormously expanded a number of non- profit-earning businesses, in which it has long since en- gaged. It is probable, however, that a considerable extension of the federal government's ownership and direction of busi- ness will take place in the future. Three factors are leading in this direction. One is the increasingly evident monopoly character of many large businesses; a second is the im- provement in our civil service; a third is the progressive democratization of the government. As monopoly invades Business, the choice lies between government and private monopoly, instead of between government monopoly and competition. The monopoly element in the business aligns "the many" against a few insiders. As the civil service improves, moreover, the government is enabled to conduct business both honestly and efficiently. As the state becomes increasingly democratized, the people accept it as their natural representative, as opposed to an entrenched indus- trial oligarchy in a monopolized business. 284 THE NEW DEMOCRACY The logic of the situation seems to demand that where there are no advantages in the private industry from individual initiative, or where those advantages do not overweigh the advantages which the state could secure from the conduct of the industry, the business should be taken over by the state after compensation to owners, and should be conducted by the state under conditions which guarantee reasonable permanence, stability, and security to all engaged, while preserving a regulated com- petition within the industry with promotion for extra ability or extra effort (according to definite rules of preferment) and with suitable rewards, monetary or other- wise. How far and how rapidly the federal government will take over private business is a question which to-day can- not yet be answered. It seems by no means improbable that the government will shortly take over the express busi- ness by embarking upon the lucrative and easily conducted parcels post. It will probably extend its banking busi- ness. It may not improbably take over the telegraph systems of the country, which have developed slowly be- cause they have been run so exclusively for profit. The government may enormously increase its business of pro- viding itself with supplies, with ships, and harbors, and blot- ting paper. It may engage more and more largely in the construction of irrigation dams and in the sale of water to a larger number of farmers. It may attain to a preeminent position in the lumber business of the country. Beyond these proximate fields lie others which may or may not come to be occupied. The government may (and if regulation fails, it will) buy, own, and operate the railroads of the country ; it may own and operate the coal mines. It may in time take step after step towards an ownership of those large, easily overseen, and inherently monopolistic businesses where centralization and subordination rule, and where THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMbCRACY 285 the choice lies between a government monopoly and a private monopoly. 1 It is partly the fear of such a possible extension of govern- ment ownership and operation that is at the base of much of the opposition to the policy of conserving our natural resources. This policy, one of the most elementary forms of business socialization, was dictated by pressing need. Our supposedly unlimited supplies of timber were proved to be nearing exhaustion. 2 "Our coal supplies are so far from being inexhaustible that if the increasing rate of consumption shown by the figures of the last seventy-five years continues to prevail, our supplies of anthracite coal will last but fifty years and of bituminous coal less than two hundred years/' 3 Yet despite this threatening dearth, public foresight is so utterly at variance with our former free-handed American practice that thousands of our conservatives were found to be bitterly antagonistic to conservation. Intrinsically conservation is nothing but saving; it is the common lot against the looters. Though its opponents 1 An exactly analogous development under similar circumstances and for like reasons is already taking place in our States and especially in our cities. Municipal ownership and operation of public services — the fur- nishing to the citizens of water, gas, electricity, traction services, etc. — seem inevitable as we progress towards a purification and democratization of municipal government. In 1908 American cities (each with a popu- lation of over 30,000) spent $275,000,000 on account of new properties, and the City of New York alone received over $18,000,000 from revenues of public service enterprises. American cities are far behind the cities of England and of the continent of Europe in everything partaking of the nature of civic prevision, and especially in the foresighted boldness which leads to an extension of civic functions. The trend, however, is in that direction. 2 "The lowest estimate reached by the Forest Service of the timber now standing in the United States is 1400 billion feet, board measure; the highest 2500 billion. The present annual consumption is approxi- mately 100 billion feet, while the annual growth is but a third of our con- sumption, or from 30 to 40 billion feet." Pinchot, Gifford, "The Fight for Conservation." New York (1910), p. 14. 8 Pinchot, G., op. cit., p. 6. 286 THE NEW DEMOCRACY represent it as a dog-in-the-manger policy, as a plan to put our natural resources into "cold storage," in reality con- servation is opposed, not to use, but to private appropria- tion, or at least to unfair, unequal, and wasteful appropria- tion. Conservation is merely a policy of protecting the public interest in our national forests, lands, mines, and water powers. Despite its seeming innocence, however, the policy of con- servation carries with it certain implications, disquieting not only to the hopeful spoilers of the public domain, but to many of their innocently eloquent coadjutors. In Alaska and. else where there are still some billions of dollars of na- tional property, and it now seems probable, in the light of our recently developed "conservation sentiment/ ' that the nation may lease this property for a valuable consideration, with the result that the people will share in the profits of exploitation. It is bad enough in the eyes of many honest citizens that the state have temporal possessions at all; that it should actually make profits (thus lowering itself to the level of mere financiers) seems to our profit seekers in- congruous and almost immoral. But an issue even more dire remains in the background. If the state presumes to withhold national resources from private capital, then at some future time it may actually go farther. It may not only keep but develop its mines, forests, and water powers. It may go into the mining, lumbering, and electrical busi- nesses. It may compete with private business. The tendency of the government to go into such businesses is reenforced whenever regulation meets with failure. There are times when men feel that the nation is flouted and mocked by the trust ; is only half -obeyed and is wholly blamed. Occasionally we tire of having the national gov- ernment act as chaperon to the trust. 1 1 From the point of view of the trust (especially if exposed to censorious tongues of investors or legislators), a certain amount of public chaperonage THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 287 / Where, however, regulation succeeds, where ends similar ! to those secured by government ownership may be obtained ^through the enforcement of uniform laws, it is often pref- erable to leave the business in private hands subject to public control. Whether a particular business, affected with a public interest, is better adapted to government opera- tion or to private operation with government regulation de- pends upon a number of conditions and is a question which the advocates of industrial socialization need not decide in advance. They may proceed as does the court, which indulges in wide-ranging obiter dicta, but cautiously decides each case upon its merits. What will ultimately decide in each case the question be- tween government operation and government regulation (when one of the two is desirable) will be the relative effi- ciency of the two methods. There are certain definite limits set to an extension of government ownership by the neces- sity of preserving the highest possible industrial efficiency. 1 While the federal government is becoming yearly more efficient, and while the vast private monopolies often show the same industrial weaknesses as government does, neverthe- less there remains a certain advantage with the trust, owing to the greater play of the desire for profits, the greater elasticity of its arrangements, and the wider latitude given to its directors. Industrial autonomy, however clear its drawbacks, does at least produce a hard, alert, wide-awake industrial agent. The disadvantage of the trust is that it is is advantageous, since the presence of a duenna, however dull and deaf, covers a multitude of financial indiscretions. From the point of view of the "regulated" corporation, there should be enough regulation to give con- fidence, but not enough to regulate. 1 A socialized industry must have a considerable efficiency because the socialized democracy of which it is a part will be one with a high cost of maintenance. It will be a society which will do without child labor and without excessive toil of men and momen. It will spend enormous sums on education. A high standard of living maintained by a large population means inevitably an enormous national expenditure. 288 THE NEW DEMOCRACY too likely to sacrifice the public interest and even the interest of the investors to a series of private interests, which are excessively stimulated. The disadvantage of public owner- jship, on the other hand, is that it tends to develop too little that sharp private interest which leads to unobserved extra exertions and to a keener and more intelligent applica- SJtion. / A compromise between this public interest and the private / interest is sought to be effected by government regulation. S>v The object of government regulation is to combine the ad- vantages of individual initiative and of public control. Against every such exercise of government regulation the theory of industrial autonomy is opposed. This theory maintains that, on the whole, the welfare of society will best be subserved by the largest practicable autonomy of business. It presupposes the least possible limitation of a perfect freedom of contract ; of the right of a man to work when and where and how he will ; of the right of the man- ufacturer to run his business in his own way. In its crassest form the theory expresses itself in the sentence, "Business must be independent of politics." What this engaging phrase really means is that society, politically organized (and to-day it is only politically that the whole of Society is democratically organised), should have no control over the industrial processes by which it lives. Industrial autonomy contemplates a state within a state; an industrial power dividing actual sovereignty with a political power. Industrial autonomy would subject society to business. 1 1 There is a modified and weakened version of industrial autonomy expressed in such phrases as "the trusteeship of wealth" and assuming that our industrial leaders are holding and directing the wealth of the com- munity in the community's ultimate interest. Between this theory, how- ever, and the ordinary economic and legal tenets of its adherents, there are many uncomfortable contradictions. The "trustees" seem unwilling to be held to an accounting. They seem to believe that the rare qualities THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 289 This theory, however, although once imposing, is now only a theory of shreds and patches. So many strands have been taken from the fabric that nothing but the most devoted blindness can discern the original pattern. We have ridden roughshod over the sacred privacy of business. We have drawn ledgers and daybooks and bank presidents into the profane daylight. We have compelled employers to put guards on machinery (even when no one but the factory inspector wanted them). We have forbidden landlords from letting their empty premises to men who clamored at the gates. We have declared that a railroad rate may not be charged (even though the passenger stands ready to pay it) ; that a service must be improved, even though the shipper demands no improvement. Surely, at first blush, it seems reasonable to allow a seller to sell cheap. Nevertheless, a railroad corporation is forbidden to sell transportation be- low the market rate ; and a railroad president, who out of kindness gives (not sells) a pass to a friendly legislator, may for his complaisance go to jail. 1 There was never a time when the government held entirely aloof from industry. Even in the palmiest days of Ameri- can individualism, there was always a certain expression of industrial socialization, since without some subordination of private initiative to public welfare, business itself is impossible. 2 Then, as now, the penal law took cognizance of the rudiments of business socialization. There might be profit in the unrestricted sale of poison, but the disadvan- tages of such unregulated sales so manifestly overweighed any good arising from profits and wages that the business was either regulated or forbidden. of trusteeship may be inherited and devised. They do not fix any time at which the ward may be expected to arrive at an age of discretion. 1 That is, he may theoretically go to jail, which is the pleasantest way of going. 2 Even the California Vigilance Committees recognized that horse stealing was a business which '/interfered with business." 290 THE NEW DEMOCRACY Certain other industries in which there is supposed to be an excess of resultant evil over good have also been legally destroyed. For over half a century Maine has prohibited the manufacture and private sale of alcoholic beverages, and recently the country has been swept by a prohibition wave which in many towns, counties, and states has closed saloons and has annihilated businesses built up on the till then tolerated drink habit. Laws against gambling have diminished the value of race tracks, pool rooms, and tele- graph systems, while the prohibition of the sale of fire- crackers to our patriotic youth has meant fewer fires, fewer funerals, and slimmer profits. The principle is well estab- lished that the continued existence of many businesses de- pends, not on the demand for their product, but on the will of the general community. Despite the opposition, therefore, of those who believe that the state should hold " hands off," the governmental regulation of business is steadily progressing in America. To an increasing extent the federal government undertakes the control of corporations. Especially in railroad legisla- tion, great progress has been made. The Interstate Com- merce Law of 1887 gave to a Government Commission the right, among other rights, to pass upon the reasonableness of rates, while forbidding rebates and discriminations by railroads in favor of persons or localities. The law of 1906 still further strengthened the power of the federal govern- ment. The Interstate Commerce Commission was given the right to fix reasonable rates upon application of a ship- per of an interested locality; in other words, was granted the enormous power of determining the price of all services rendered by railroads doing an annual business of two and one half billions of dollars. By a series of laws between 1887 and 1910, the power of the Interstate Commerce Com- mission has been extended to all common carriers engaged in the carriage of oil (pipe lines) ; to telegraph, telephone, THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 291 and cable companies; while the jurisdiction of the Com- mission has been extended as to through rates and joint rates, freight classification, switch connections, etc. The Commission has also been granted the right to make in- vestigations on its own motion, without awaiting the ini- tiative of an injured shipper. By the Act of March 2, 1893, railroads were obliged to equip their cars with automatic couplers and other safety devices, and by the law of April 14, 1910, this act was supplemented by requiring railroads to equip their cars with sill steps, hand brakes, ladders, running boards, and grab irons, and the Interstate Commerce Com- mission was empowered to designate the number, dimensions, location, and manner of application of these appliances. The Arbitration Act of 1898 provided for government mediation between interstate railroads and their employees. The Inter- state Commerce laws prescribe a uniform system of account- ing for all railroad corporations, a filing of annual reports, and an inspection by the Commission of all accounts, records, and memoranda. By the law of 1910, a special commission is provided to investigate the issuance of railroad stocks and bonds. Step by step the whole business of transportation and communication is more and more subjected in all its parts and in all its relations to a strict government regulation in the public interest. f^In the future we shall enormously increase the extent of regulation. Not only can we pursue an active social policy by means of the regulation of industry, but we can also so direct and restrain and guide the strong economic impulses of society as to make the product of industry not only larger, ^J^ut more widely and more fairly distributed. Not only can we conserve our natural, and reserve our national, resources; not only can we retain for the people the franchises, grants, and valuable privileges which they now possess or which will come to them in the future ; but we can so regulate busi- ness as to prevent or lessen waste, internal friction, inter- 292 THE NEW DEMOCRACY business friction, the excessive fluctuations of seasonal trades, the wide fluctuations between good years and bad years, the duplication of plant or product, the production of useless or deleterious articles, the use of chicanery and of false representation, the extortions of monopoly, the unfair, unequal, and uneconomical distribution of the product, etc., etc. We should aim to secure at the lowest possible cost in effort the greatest possible production of articles worth consuming, and so distributed as to give the greatest possible satisfaction in their consumption. In the regulation of industry it is not necessary or desirable to pass laws where the personal interests involved, whether of employer or employed, of seller or buyer, of director, manager, promoter, or investor, are capable of accomplishing the same result. It is important that the democracy make use of all existing agencies for the attainment of its industrial I program. One of the most representative and powerful of such \agencies is the labor organization. The trade-union is not ah urbane body of abnegating workmen united for the good of the employers or for that of the general community. It is not without fear, nor without reproach. Nor, for that matter, were the mailed barons who extorted Magna Charta from King John ; nor the tedious old councilors who secured the liberties of the towns ; nor the purse-proud Commons who won a measure of political democracy (for their own class) by withholding their money, as the trade-unionists to-day withhold their labor. In point of fact the trade- union is a group of workingmen pursuing their joint interests in much the same spirit as each member might be supposed to pursue his individual interests. But because those in- terests are joint and because in general they are the interests of people who are least represented in industry, the trade- unionists in what has been called their " corporate egotism" are promoting industrial democracy. Actually, trade-union- THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 293 ists are far better democrats than their immediate inter- ests necessitate, since their feeling of solidarity (except among a minority) stretches far beyond the boundaries of their trade. 1 While, however, it is not necessary to secure for working- men what their trade unions have already secured for them, it is desirable, in the interests of fairer-minded employers them- selves, to make uniform the progress already attained, and to enormously extend the scope of factory and labor legislation, in order to lessen hours, improve sanitary conditions of factories, decrease the mortality and sickness in the trades, and generally to improve conditions which are as much a part of the workman's real wage as are the dollars which he finds in his pay envelope. 2 1 In America the great mass of farmers, small tradesmen, and profes- sional men fail to sympathize with the trade-union through lack of an understanding of its fundamental aims and of the environment of the men who stand for those aims. The average outside individual objects to the trade-union, not because it insists on higher wages (which all are willing to concede — provided some one else pays them) but because it demands "the recognition of the union." Actually, however, in our more and more centralized industry this demand for recognition is the nearest possible approach to a real industrial democracy or even to a real industrial liberty for the workers. The kindly and often sympathetic opponents of the closed shop and of the recognition of the union appeal to the freedom of every individual, unionist or non-unionist, to make a fair contract with his em- ployer. It is perhaps a pleasanter ideal than collective bargaining with striking, picketing, and a compulsory membership in a union, but it is an ideal, which, for the present, is unattainable in many trades. 2 Whether we shall within the near future prescribe minimum wages by law, as has recently been done for several trades in the United King- dom, will depend upon whether or not we attain the desired results by other means. It was once held that it was economically unthinkable — in fact, almost impious — to attempt to fix wages or prices by law. Within certain bounds this was true. If you make legal wages so high or legal prices so low that no incentive remains for production, then pro- duction will cease. But there is a wide margin of action between this and the establishment of definite minima of wages considerably above those in our worst-paid trades. Within that margin it is economically as pos- sible to regulate wages as to regulate hours or sanitary conditions. It is 294 THE NEW DEMOCRACY In some industrial situations, regulation must be plenary, detailed, and all-comprehensive. In other situations it may be more restricted. In still others, it may be limited to a mere insistence upon publicity of operations. To an increasing extent we are putting our trust in business publicity. It is a splendid means of unchaining public resentment or of inciting public approval. Knowledge permits potent economic forces to unbind themselves. Con- sumers, investors, voters, and the community in general are aided in their action by the certainty which publicity brings. Where publicity fails to restrain, a more thoroughgoing regulation is necessary. Where the thoroughgoing regulation is in prospect, publicity is an excellent antecedent. How much publicity is required depends upon the business, upon the extent to which it is invested with a public interest, upon whether there already exists a beneficent regulation by competition, upon the extent of the dangers which may flow from secrecy. Many men still claim that their particular businesses cannot be run with publicity. This is true only to the extent that a man whose business secrets are known is at a disadvantage in competition with a man whose business secrets are unknown. Publicity, doubtless, works often to the advantage of the large purse and the established firm, since those who are already strong have a relative advan- tage in securing, let us say, credit facilities. On the other hand, secrecy and the power to exert undue influence work to the advantage of the unscrupulous. Complete industrial socialization does not stop short at production and sale. It does not content itself with regu- lating the conditions under which articles shall be produced or the prices at which they shall be sold. It requires a as easy to forbid the manufacturers of cottons or woolens to pay less than a denned scale of wages as it is to forbid the manufacture of counterfeit coins or the distilling of untaxed whisky. All that is required is a changed point of view in ourselves and our judges. THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 295""^ reasonable and just distribution of the product of industry, a / fair adjustment as between wages, profits, interest, rent, and \ the share of the state. It affects the redistribution of wealth 1 after the ordinary distribution has taken place. It affects past accumulations, and the returns upon past accumulations. There are several ways in which the continued growth of enormous fortunes may be hampered, if not prevented. The social wealth to be created may be deflected to the commu- nity by a governmental acquisition of natural monopolies. During the next one hundred years American railroads, American mines, American forests, and American lands are likely to increase stupendously in value. With any reason- ably large growth of population, these properties should in- crease to an amount which is entirely beyond anything in our experience, and is almost beyond our conception. By the gradual acquisition of such properties, or of strategic elements of such properties, 1 the community could divert to itself a large part of this probable new wealth. It could accomplish this purpose by taxation, by the direct and in- creasing taxation of the unearned increment. The state might make a periodical valuation of all property invested with a public interest, as well as of all property to which in a marked degree a future unearned increment will adhere, and at regular intervals might take for itself a part (and a con- stantly increasing part) of the unearned increment which had accrued since the valuation immediately preceding. 2 Theoretically there are no limits to state action along these lines. The sovereign state has a primordial, intrinsic, underlying right to all property, more valid in the final in- stance than the property right vested in the legal owner. 1 If the nation owned the railroads and thus controlled transportation rates, it could easily determine what part of the value of mines and forests should belong to it, and what portion should belong to the legal owners. The anthracite railroads determined the value of the anthracite mines by fixing the charges for the transportation of anthracite coal. 2 See the English procedure under the Lloyd-George Budget. 296 THE NEW DEMOCRACY The right to tax involves the right to destroy. In no other great country of the world, moreover, would this residual claim of the nation be so capable of being enforced, since the property of American citizens is so largely invested at home. The British owner of South American gold mines may escape British taxation by removing to a foreign country, but in America the expatriation of the owner cannot effect the withdrawal of his capital. The property is here. To an overwhelming extent, the wealth of the nation is irrevocably and forever situate in this country. Even after the wealth has passed into the hands of indi- viduals it is not beyond the reach of the state. By progres- sive taxes on property, incomes, or inheritances (including taxation upon gifts inter vivos within a certain period prior to death), the state can do much towards preventing too insensate an accumulation of individual wealth. Theoreti- cally there are no limits to taxation along these lines. The nation might legally make itself sole heir to each of its citizens. Actually, no such extreme contingency is at all probable. The levying of a one hundred per cent inheritance tax would not meet with the approbation of more than an insignificant and ineffectual fraction of the people. A far more moderate tax would largely dry up the wells of enterprise ; and even an entirely reasonable, and from a social point of view a very low, inheritance or income tax is evaded systematically and flagrantly. State income taxes are of practically no value in reducing inequalities of wealth, since a man can acquire an exempting citizenship in a neighboring State far more easily than he can secure a new agent to look after his property. /"^ In the socialization of wealth by means of taxation, two / inevitable tendencies are observable. The first of these is an increasing emphasis laid upon the national as distinct \ from the State governments, since the latter are not suffi- \ ciently formidable to cope with the gigantic private interests \ THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 297 to which they may be opposed. The second is a change in our conception of the fundamental purposes of taxation. The prevalent theory in America during the last century was that taxation was to be levied for the sole purpose of raising government revenues. It should therefore be as little as possible, and should be divided among the people according to their ability to pay. In other words, it should leave all citizens in the same relative position as it found them. We are now going over more completely to a conception of taxation as an instrument for the socialization of production and wealth ; as a means of changing the currents and direc- tions of distribution. In other words, the social, as well as the merely fiscal, ends of taxation are held in view. 1 / With a government ownership of some industries, with a — government regulation of others, with publicity for all (to the extent that publicity is socially desirable), with an en- larged power of the community in industry, and with an increased appropriation by the community of the increasing social surplus and of the growing unearned increment, the progressive socialization of industry will take place. To accomplish these ends the democracy will rely upon the trade- union, the association of consumers, and other industrial agencies. It will, above all, rely upon the state. 1 The protective tariff (as opposed to the tariff for revenue only) had an avowed social end. So also taxes on the liquor trade, etc. CHAPTER XVIII THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY THE democracy seeks a complete control over govern- mental machinery and processes. It seeks to break the power of a politically entrenched plutocracy, to attain to a government by the people for the people. / Without such democratic control of government there / can be no permanent democratic control of industry. For, ^\in ultimate analysis, we own our house, inherit our farm, draw our profits, or obey the factory bell by grace (or command) of the political sovereign. Bequest, inheritance, private prop- erty, free contract, are subject to law. Law is legislative enactment, executive administration, judicial interpretation. The legislature, executive, courts, are, in democratic countries, immediately or finally, actually or potentially, the creatures of politics. They are the genii of the ballot box. y^ In attempting to secure political control, the democracy proceeds along five paths. These paths are (1) the demo- cratic control of parties and of party nominations ; (2) the democratic control of elections ; (3) the democratic control of representatives already elected ; (4) direct legislation by the people ; (5) increased efficiency of the democratized govern- ment. Control of political parties is the very beginning of po- litical democracy. The people are no longer content to vote for one of two candidates, collusively nominated by the allied corruption of two parties, and foisted upon the public, as a gambler " forces" a card upon a raw novice. In the interest of a popular election, a popular nomination is demanded. To choose between candidates, the people must choose the can- didates. 298 THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 299 The legal regulation of parties, which has already pro- gressed far, has been made possible by one of those subtle changes in American political life, which, though they leave no mark upon constitutions, fundamentally alter the actual bases of government. The party, hitherto unrecognized by our constitutions and laws, was forbidden to place its nomi- nees upon the official ballot unless the party officers certi- fied such nominations to be genuine. " Parties of a certain size, which had been given a privileged position for their nominees upon the ballot were, in return for this privilege, subjected to special restrictions. It was an easy step from permitting the two great parties to have their candidates placed upon the ballot (when certified by the party officials) to requiring that these nominations should have been made only in accordance with such rules and regulations as might be deemed necessary — in short, to prescribing in detail regu- lations governing the entire procedure of party primaries. The party ceased to be a purely voluntary association, and became a recognized part of the nominating machinery." * / Legal control of party and primary, once initiated, was rapidly extended. It developed from a local or special regu- lation, optional with the party, to one which was general, State-wide, and compulsory. It led in a number of States to St ate- wide compulsory and universal direct primaries. Prior to the adoption in many of our States of direct pri- maries, the average political partisan cast his ballot, not for the ultimate candidate, but for men who chose men who chose the candidate. The result was often a complete travesty upon popular rights. Controlling financial interests ac- quired what was almost an acknowledged right to nominate /the candidates. With direct primaries, on the other hand, V the people directly select their own candidates. Where direct nominations are reenforced by laws against corrupt 1 Merriam (C. Edward), "Primary Elections,". Chicago (University of Chicago Press), 1909, p. 30, 300 THE NEW DEMOCRACY practices, the power of the majority over the making of nominations is correspondingly augmented. With each year the popularity of party regulation and of \ direct nominations becomes more evident and new means are \ devised to render the system simpler and more efficacious/ "The Connecticut democracy," says the 1910 State plat- form, " favors the direct primary form of nominations in order that the people may select their own servants," and Republicans, Prohibitionists, Socialists, and others are in full accord. "The Direct Primary Law," say the New Hampshire Republicans, "has proved an unqualified success. The choice of delegates to national conventions should be brought under its provisions." Everywhere there is a de- mand for an extension, simplification, and improvement of the system of direct primaries. Utah Republicans (1910) clamor for a "direct primary law, by which all general offi- cers, including candidates for the United States Senate, may be chosen by vote by the whole people." Iowa Democrats and Minnesota Republicans ask for a lessening of the ex- penses attendant upon primary elections, while in other States the demand is made for the publication of the expenses of all candidates for the nomination prior to the primary. New York Republicans insist "that the same safeguards should surround primary elections as have been shown to be effective in preventing repeating and frauds at general elec- tions." The chief object of direct primaries and of other proposals for the democratization of the party is to break up the alli- ance between corrupt business and corrupt politics. The question is often raised as to whether men of wealth (because of their greater liability to taxation or for other reasons) should not be accorded a larger power in the state than an equal number of penniless citizens. So stated, however, the problem is academic, for to-day, in all countries, men of wealth possess this advantage. Democracy is faced with the „ THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 301 problem, not of according wealth a certain extra influence over legislation, but of so limiting and moderating that influ- ence as to permit an even partial effectuation of the will of the majority. Much of this influence is ineradicable. Wealth gives leisure and intellectual opportunities. Money buys pub- licity, orators, advocates. There are always disinterested wealth worshipers, who find in the counsels of the mil- lionaire grace, logic, and the sweetest reasonableness. We cannot legislate against the glamour of possessions. But the influence of wealth takes a more tangible form when, in the thick of electoral campaigns, our great corporations, not unsolicited, draw near to our party managers, and thrust into their expectant hands a modest contribution to the cause of justice and liberty. If we are not to be subdued by the plutocracy, we must beware these Greeks bearing gifts. We must control the party through its purse. Already great progress has been made. The reform of the federal Civil Service during the last thirty years has tended towards the moralization and the democratization of the party by reducing on this side the amount of blackmail which it is enabled to levy. Laws against the granting of free passes by railroads have put a stop to another form of party /corruption. Finally, the prohibition of campaign contributions by corporations and the compulsory publica- tion by the parties of the source of moneys received and of the destination of moneys expended limit the scope of an evil financial influence upon the party. The democratization of the party and of the primary is chiefly desired because it leads to the democratization of elections. About the voting booth is fought the main battle between democracy and plutocracy. The democratization of elections no longer takes in the main the direction of an extension of male suffrage. For- tunately the federal Constitution left to the several States 302 THE NEW DEMOCRACY the right to determine the qualifications of voters, 1 with the result that the religious and property tests of 1787, not de- scending to us as priceless heritages, were rapidly and suc- cessively abrogated. Forty years after the adoption of the Constitution, De Tocqueville could write " Universal suf- frage has been adopted in all the States of the Union." This " universal suffrage, " debarring, as it did, women and Negroes, was an adult, male, white suffrage, and that in the main is what it is to-day. The voters, who in 1908 were qualified to vote for Taft or Bryan, would for the most part have been qualified in 1840 to vote for Harrison or Van Buren. In 1840, with few newspapers, bad roads, and a sparsely settled population, there were 14.1 voters to every thousand of the population ; in 1908, there were not quite 17 voters per thousand. Although full woman suffrage has been established in six of our States, over 95 per cent of the adult women of the country are still without this full vote. The suffrage, extended after the Civil War to the Southern Negroes, has practically been withdrawn. Nor is there much likelihood that, in the near future, there will be any diversion of the democratic activities of the majority to the securing of a wider vote for Negroes. In the matter of Negro suffrage we have witnessed a sharp reaction from the noble optimism of fifty years ago. To-day, millions of men, discouraged by the dwindling but still large residuum of Negro ignorance, discouraged by the passion which sweeps like a torrid wind over every phase of the question, seek to avoid the subject of Negro suffrage, as their grandfathers, the " finality men" of the fifties, sought to evade the subject of Negro slavery. There are sons of Northern soldiers who deplore the invidious distinction between black ignorance and white ignorance, between black 1 Art. I, Sec. 11. While the federal government has the right of creat- ing citizens, the State governments, subject nominally to the 14th and 15th amendments, have the right to determine who shall vote. s THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 303 grandfathers and white grandfathers, but who wish to post- pone the problem of Negro enfranchisement until other press- ing problems of our new democracy are in process of solution. Similarly many men, who have more than a platonic affec- tion for woman's suffrage, are too absorbed in the problem of increasing the potency of present voters to give more than a casual adherence to the cause of the women. "Let us in- crease our vote," these men seem to say, "but above all et us make our present vote count." The first step in making the vote count was to see that it was counted. From the beginning ballot stuffing, the rifling (or stealing) of ballot boxes, the adding of votes by the most fantastic processes of political arithmetic, had made of vot- ing an unmeaning, if rather an impressive, rite. Fortu- nately the task of remedying these evils was begun decades ago. Systems of preelection registration resulted in an heroic purging of a phantom electorate, and stopped the worst excesses of our "plural" voters. The sweeping vic- tories of the Australian ballot moderated the widespread intimidation of voters and enormously reduced the scope of bribery. Even with these reforms, we are far from an absolutely democratic election. Apart from our gerrymandered elec- toral districts and our non-representation of large minorities — and even of majorities — we still halt behind our ideals. Progress, however, is being made. Our latter-day democrats are no longer satisfied with the husk of a meaningless vote. They do not wish to give their suffrages to candidates with- out knowing who they are, for a vote in ignorance is no vote. They do not wish to vote for a tail of insignificant nobodies upon the soaring kite of one conspicuous candidate. Finally, they desire no more electoral middlemen, but prefer to vote directly for their own representatives, even for United States senators, rather than to vote for men who will vote for these officials. 304 THE NEW DEMOCRACY That the American democracy is possessed of political capacity and resourcefulness is shown by the fact that a large proportion of our United States senators are already being elected by what is practically the direct vote of the people of their State. The Constitution of the United States distinctly prescribes that the Senate " shall be com- posed of two senators from each State, chosen by the Legis- lature thereof." * An amendment to this constitutional provi- sion has often been proposed, but the indirectly elected senators have not been precipitate in its welcome. In the meanwhile, a number of Western States have used the direct primary to attain this result indirectly. In these States any person seeking a nomination as State legislator may promise in advance that if nominated and elected he will vote for the people's candidate for United States senator irre- spective of personal preferences; or, by declining so to pledge r himself, he may commit political suicide. The result is that / the recommendation of the people becomes binding upon all legislators irrespective of party, so that it occasionally hap- I pens that a State legislature of one party elects a United States senator of the opposing party. With respect to this one function, the State legislators become mere delegates, as automatic in their actions as are the members of the Elec- toral College, who choose the President. The people elect their own senators. 2 Even though the people nominate and elect their candi- date, how can they control him after election ? The old solution of this difficulty was to threaten the repre- 1 Art. I, Sec. 111. 2 Senators thus directly nominated have constituencies, but senators elected according to the old method have none. The State legislators who elect the latter are politically short-lived members of assemblies, which lapse long before the six years' term of the Senate is over. Their repre- sentative quality is exceedingly dubious, since in any modern sense of the phrase a man cannot be represented by any one over whose selection he does not exercise direct control. THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY^ ( sentative that if he betrayed his trust he would never be" reelected. This method was not efficacious. The legisla- tor shrewdly interpreted the word "never" in a Gilbertian sense, as meaning "hardly ever." The boss was near; the "people" (to the politician the word was only a political expression) were distant. Many a roistering legislator preferred a short and a merry political life to a leaner career spread over a longer period. The new solution is the recall. The recall is like the long arm of coincidence. It is always ready. It is always threatening. In the heyday of his political triumphs, the legislator is in the valley of the shadow of the recall. The corrupt official is not even sure of immediate gleanings, since he may be cut down in his prime by the very people who have just elected him. The virtue of the recall, which has already been adopted by many American cities, lies in its ease of application. A certain fraction of the qualified voters (usually 25 per cent) may sign a petition for the removal of any elected officer. In the ensuing special election the official is a candidate (unless he specifically declines to run) ; but if he fails to receive a plurality, he is deemed removed from office as soon as the plurality candidate qualifies as his successor. For the time being the recall is in high favor with the democracy, and the demand for its adoption appears with in- creasing frequency in the platforms and protestations of the political parties. It is to be noted, however, that the de- mocracy does not everywhere proceed along identical lines, but that in different places and even in the same place it proposes alternative reforms for the same evil. It labors for the democratic control of the party, while simultaneously striving for its abolition. 1 It asks at once for the democrati- zation of the representative system and for its displacement 1 See the movement for nominations by petition, which is intended ab- solutely to circumvent the party and destroy its main use. 306 THE NEW DEMOCRACY by a direct democracy, in which the people, rather than their representatives, will propose and enact legislation. The re- call, intended to increase the control of the people over sus- pected representatives, is likely to have a useful life during a period of political transition, but it is hardly probable that it will be widely used if America goes over to direct /democracy. 1 jcC There are two great complementary features of direct | legislation, — the referendum and the initiative. The referendum is the people's veto. Under the referen- J dum, bills passed by the legislature are referred to the people, either automatically or upon the demand of a certain propor- tion of the voters, and are accepted or rejected by the people. On the other hand, the initiative is a device by which a certain number of electors may propose a measure, which, with or without the approval of the legislature, must be referred to the people. The referendum enables the people to veto undesired legislation. The initiative enables the people to enact desired legislation. The fundamental principle of the referendum is that it is desirable that the voters have the opportunity of expressing themselves upon all problems which they consider of para- mount importance. Our present system is far from this ideal. In our presidential elections, there are always a score of issues and half a dozen potentially " paramount" issues, upon each of which each of the two great parties delivers itself in emphatic ambiguities. The American voter, as confused as a child at a four-ringed circus, seeks to answer a dozen questions and decide among a hundred candidates, not by writing a three-volume book, but by putting his mark under the Republican or the Democratic emblem. To state his preference on all these problems, " to say aye or no to these 1 In the Swiss cantons the recall (on a somewhat different basis), while it remains a possible weapon in times of emergency, is now rarely used, inasmuch as the referendum and the initiative make an appeal to it seldom THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 307 particulars," he would have to borrow Gargantua's mouth. Instead — to change the metaphor — he can only wag his tail up or down. The result is that post-election reasons for victory and defeat "are as plentiful as blackberries," and the journals of the opposed political parties are farther apart in interpreting "the plain verdict of the people" than were party platforms or party candidates before election. The referendum gives the dumb god, Demos, a voice. The referendum, combined with the initiative, is the yes or no answer of the people to a definite question, propounded by the legislators or by the people. It is the power of the voters to propose laws and amendments to the State constitution ; to enact or reject such laws and amendments, and to confirm or nullify all legislative action. It is the ultimate appeal from the people's representatives to the people. The adoption of the referendum and initiative tends to limit the range and decision of our elected legislator^/ It tends to transform these legislators from representatives, possessed of personal, individual opinions (although elected because their opinions are in supposed accord with those of their constituents) into mere delegates ; into mere mechanical forecasters and repeaters of popular deliverances ; into par- rot-like, political phonographs. The recall, by keeping the popular thumb upon the recalcitrant lawgiver, acts in the same way. The result may not always be good. A high-spirited statesman, placed in a position where he may be checked, halted, thwarted — often, most unreasonably — where an appeal lies from his every action, where even his tenure depends upon his "giving satisfaction," is tempted to with- draw from the impotent eminence of office ; or, if he remain, he may suffer in initiative, courage, and self-esteem. If we adopt direct legislation with anything like logical consist- ency, we shall not have a Pitt, a Burke, a Webster, a Cal- houn in every State assembly and city council. r 308 THE NEW DEMOCRACY Without direct government, however, we have a plentiful lack of such notables, and we have blundered through a legis- lative century with lawgivers who were not always high- spirited, nor even invariably honest. If a measure of direct government does not improve our best legislators, it may ac- complish something equally important. It may improve the worst. *~ Moreover, although men are crying that representative government is dead and that the occupation of the legislator is gone, the fundamental issue in America is in reality not between representative and direct government (both of which systems have merits, inconveniences, and perils), but between a misrepresentative, plutocratic government and a democratic government, whether representative, direct, or mixed. Amer- ica is seeking the cure of a seeming democracy in real de- mocracy. If universal suffrage leads to ignorant voting, the cure is not a restriction of the suffrage, but an education of the voters. If the party controls politics, then the party must be democratized or destroyed. So with our so-called repre- sentative system. It must be democratized or destroyed. The referendum is not perfect any more than the secret ballot or the policeman's club is perfect. It is merely the best expedient in the present circumstances. With the referendum we shall doubtless enact into law a vast deal of sublimated nonsense — as we do now without the refer- endum. Even if the average quality of our laws were to be somewhat lowered by the referendum (which in America seems improbable), we might still accept that drawback because of the measure of insurance which the direct appeal to the people gives us against corrupt legislation and the grant of valuable franchises and concessions by men who have been paid their price. Under our so-called representative government, bribery becomes as safe and as venial as mere perjury. Bribed men tell no tales; bribers are equally reticent. When the con- THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 309 sideration is a fee for " prof essional services," or the chance to be carried on a broker's books and win " heads" or "tails" ; when bribery appears under as many disguises as the good M. Lecoq, our primitive, punitive laws, while necessary, are singularly innocuous. The incarceration of a few pitiable bribe takers (whose offense is mere unskillfulness) is as little consoling to the robbed people as would be the spectacle of thieves rotting on gibbets, especially when the briber flour- ishes like a bay tree and the franchise (the occasion of the bribe) is gone forever. To prevent bribery in such cases, an ounce of referendum is worth a dozen State prisons. If no franchise may be given without the special consent of the people, it wonder- fully reduces the vogue and scope of financial corruption. For the briber is a frugal and a timorous man, who will not trust his argosies to unknown waves, and the vote of an al- derman, councilman, assemblyman, or State Senator — to go no higher — is of less value, when what he has to sell has "a string to it," and the unbuyable people hold the string. In their use of the referendum, the American people will be far more fortunate if they remember some of its defects and^ limitations. Its tendency (at least when separated from the\ initiative) is somewhat conservative. 1 Its result depends upon the manner in which the legislative questions are pro- pounded. It is likely to weary the electors if too freely used. It is likely to be used by weak-kneed legislators to throw the burden of an awkward decision back upon the electors. Finally, it cannot accomplish the impossible. It cannot do alone what can only be accomplished by a com- 1 Under the Swiss federal referendum about two thirds of all laws submitted are rejected. The Swiss, both in federal and cantonal votings, tend to reject novel proposals, although a measure rejected once or twice or oftener may ultimately be accepted. The majority against a law may be merely a bundle of minorities, one group voting against one clause, an- other group against a second clause, and a third group against a third clause. 310 THE NEW DEMOCRACY bination of reforms. It cannot remake the people. If the people are a sleeping princess, waiting for the fairy prince of political saviors to awaken it, then the referendum will not avail any more than any other device of government. If the people do not want, they will not get. A referendum is no more valuable than a vote of an assembly, if the people do not vote at the referendum. Within the limits set by these conditions, however, the referendum, united with the initiative, has vast possibilities in our present state of politics. Not only may it check much of our residual corruption, not only may it directly give to the people a larger measure of political control than they now possess, but it may have the even greater merit of being a vast school of democratic education. If our referendum votes can be made educational campaigns, free from personalities, the result may be a large and direct contribution to political orality and education. When we analyze these changes — direct nominations, 4e recall, the initiative, the referendum — we find that eir common characteristic is the directness of their appeal to the rule of the majority. This directness is part of a demo- cratic tendency to make all political processes simpler. Our legal and political, like our industrial, problems are becoming daily more intricate. Despite our more diffused education, therefore, it becomes increasingly necessary that our discon- certing difficulties should not be increased by obscurities, stumbling blocks, and handicaps in our political machinery. Our governmental system must be as understandable as is compatible with efficiency and with a just representation of all classes. We must have a glass-house government; a government standardized and systematized ; a government with double-entry bookkeeping ; with conspicuous heads ; with the line of responsibility leading straight and clear from the obscurest subofficial to the responsible chief. Obscurity works in the interest of special classes ; clarity in the interest >*%m THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 311 of the people. If the people are to rule, they must not be made to waste their vision, enthusiasm, or indignation in vain attempts to determine who is to blame or what it is all about. This simplicity of political arrangements is necessary to governmental efficiency, without which no great extension of governmental functions is possible. If an oligarchic but efficient industry is opposed by a lax and inefficient govern- ment, the former will easily escape effective regulation. If factory inspectors, tax receivers, and " plain-clothes men" accept bribes; if civil servants buy their places with contribu- tions to political parties; if the government, losing money on all its ventures, spends two dollars where only one dollar was spent before, the industrial oligarchy will be safe, because the people will prefer present evils to those which a corrupt and inefficient government might introduce into business. Years ago our public administration was so dishonest and so incomparably inefficient that private business did not anticipate any great popularity for the governmental regu- lation of industry. 1 To-day things are different. Thanks / largely to the incentive of business men, government is becoming quite reasonably efficient. When the plutocracy began to organize the country's business, it found that it was also necessary to improve certain phases of government. To compete with British and German manufacturers, we needed a better consular service. For the sake of business, we needed better fire and police protection, better sanitation, better administration of the wharves, a better service generally. Efficiency, however, is a contagious virtue, and inefficiency, which lives com- fortably by itself in pleasant dark places, cannot co-exist with efficiency. One branch after another of the civil service of nation, State, and city improved. Red tape, 1 Thirty years ago we did not know how corrupt private business was, nor from what respectable sources official corruption came. 312 THE NEW DEMOCRACY goose quills, and a bewigged and pompous ceremonial gave way to counting machines, public automobiles, and an easy and rapid dispatch of public business. Intolerable condi- tions became in some governmental places tolerable; in some places, fairly good ; in some, excellent. To-day the administrative efficiency of our federal govern- ment is as much superior to what it was a generation ago, as is the efficiency of the locomotive of 1911 to that of the loco- motive of 1876. The superlatively efficient Standard Oil Company probably does not conduct its business with truer economy and efficiency than have been manifested by the federal government in the construction of the Panama Canal. We are carrying out our great irrigation works, and conducting (in connection with them) a manifold series of auxiliary businesses with a reasonable degree of success. Our post office service, though somewhat hobbled by holdovers (both men and methods), compares neverthe- less in net efficiency with the great express companies. 1 Our national forests are admirably run; our federal De- partment of Agriculture (which is a great nonprofit-earning business) is conducted as well as the average University, or private philanthropic institution. The same is true of many branches of our State and local governments. The improvement in our civil service alone marks a great step forward. A quarter of a century ago, one of the most convincing arguments against a proposed government operation of railroads was that the admission of half a million railroad employees would still further demoralize our corrupt civil service. In 1911, with almost two million 1 Comparisons between the rival efficiency of government, and private businesses cannot be made solely on the basis of profits. The government willingly pays higher wages than it is compelled to pay. It willingly gives a better service than it is compelled to give. It gladly conducts a large part of its business at a fiscal loss, but at a social gain. On the whole, the people of the United States can better pay high wages to government employees than allow exorbitant profits to promoters of express companies. THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 313 steam railroad employees, this particular difficulty seems less formidable. There are everywhere signs of an increasing recognition by our more democratic governments that to fulfill their functions they must be efficient. The last twenty years have witnessed an enormous advance in the sheer efficiency of our local governments. Bureaus of Municipal Research point out improvements in municipal administration; annual congresses of municipal officials, enable comparative studies to be made of municipal methods. 1 In many localities we have efficient govern- ment of cities by small commissions, democratically elected, invested with great power and with clear responsibility, and subject to immediate recall by an adverse ma- jority. All this efficiency is important, but a still greater efficiency on a far higher plane is necessary if we are to democratize our industrial and political life. Our political machinery — national, State, and local; legislative, executive, administra- tive, and judicial; constitutional and extraconstitutional — our whole political machinery in all its parts must be adapted to all the changing purposes of government. It is of small advantage that our legislators are democratically nominated, elected, and controlled ; it is of small advantage that each separate government wheel turns with a noiseless ease, if the system as a whole is ill-geared. If in a government there is a lack of proper coordination among parts; if certain parts are weak which should be strong, and certain 1 It is important that efficiency be not identified with lessened govern- mental expenditures, with a cheeseparing and a special care for the preser- vation of the governmental lead pencils and the soap and towels in the public offices. In these days of rapidly expanding governmental functions the bark of "the watchdog of the treasury" is not the epitome of political wisdom. The true policy is fairly well stated in the (1910) Platform of the New York State Independence League : "While emphasizing the im- portance of a business-like and economical administration, we believe that the State should unhesitatingly expend whatever is necessary for the com- plete performance of its functions." 314 THE NEW DEMOCRACY parts are strong which might be weak; if between State and nation there are jurisdictional disputes; and if there are jurisdictional disputes between legislative and judiciary; if there is fluctuation where there should be stability, and a stiff unchangeability where there should be elasticity and change, — if there are these or any of these, then no true efficiency can be maintained. Of all these elements of national inefficiency the delimita- tion of powers between the federal and the State govern- ments is the most patent. Democratic reforms are often far >re difficult to effect than in England or in France because in the United States there may be a conflict of author- ity between State and federal jurisdictions. Labor laws which in England or France would be passed by the national legislature and become law for the whole country must here be enacted, not by the federal government, but by each State for its own residents, and a law passed in any such State may be declared unconstitutional because,, in violation of the federal Constitution. / We are increasingly perceiving that many of our problems are national problems and cannot be solved by any govern- mental unity less than the nation. Regulation of interstate railroads has long since passed beyond effective State action, and the regulation of our great industrial corporations is similarly beyond the scope of State action. In the matter of the conservation of our natural resources, in the matter of the taxation of incomes and of inheritances, even in the problem of education and of certain forms of labor and fac- tory legislation, we should be far better off for an extension of our federal powers. By this it is not meant that we should surrender our federal system of "an indissoluble union of indestructible States," or that we should reduce those States to the status of counties or departements. There are many advantages to our present system. It permits the more progressive THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 315 States to go forward without waiting for the consent of the less advanced States. 1 It permits us to maintain political experiment stations, where new ideas may be tried out quickly and on a small scale. It enables us to make our mistakes cheaply. But it is also used to halt progress and to maintain reactionary districts from the impact of democratic forces. It is used as an obstacle to progress, when men who want no conservation plead for State as against national conservation. It is used to prevent national action and to thwart State action, and to delay each in the supposed interest of the other. To an extent, our government already answers to the needs of the people, but it does so ineffectually, like a clumsy, ancient engine which utilizes only one or two per cent of the power applied to it. More or less we can obviate the evils of our present imperfect federal system by creating new extra- legal agencies, such as the house of governors, or other means of creating a unanimous action by a large num- ber of States. Progress towards a really effective and specialized democratic government can be made in other ways. We can establish a larger measure of municipal home rule; we can reform our legislative methods in the House of Representatives 2 and elsewhere ; we can more completely separate local from national politics, and we can increase our independent voting both in municipal and in 1 Under a system of uniform, contemporaneous legislation by a group of progressive States, a more rapid advance can probably be made than could be made by waiting for the larger political body — the nation — to move. 2 The attempt to reform the rules of the House of Representatives led, in 1910, to a severe conflict between house insurgents and house "stand- patters." It is interesting to reflect that the rules of the House of Repre- sentatives, which can be changed at any moment by a vote of a majority of the House (without the concurrence of Senate or of President) have probably done more within later decades to obstruct democratic progress than has the unequal distribution among the States of senators, although the latter cannot (theoretically) b^ shanged against the will of any State even by the process of constitutional amendment. i 316 THE NEW DEMOCRACY - national elections. Finally, within the States we can secure proportional representation. 1 Much of our progress towards a complete majority govern- ment might be made without any change in the federal Constitution. Sooner or later, however, the growing political democracy will be aborted and halted by the inelasticity of that document, and in the time to come a demand will / be made for fundamental constitutional transformations and adjustments. j Upon the manner in which this demand is made and met will depend much of the future political history of the United \ States. If the Constitution will permit itself to be changed I to meet the changing needs of the nation, it will grow in dignity and prestige. If, on the other hand, it does not change, or if it changes too slowly to permit political trans- formations to be made with a minimum of friction, then it will be broken, violently distorted, or swept aside. It would be a mistake on the part of those who wish the Constitution to remain forever as it is to count too much upon its popularity as an obstacle to change. That the document is stupendously popular is evident. But the Constitution will remain popular only so long as it permits the progressive attainment by the people of the things which they desire. The veneration in which the Constitution has so long been held, has largely been due to our prosperity 1 So completely are we wedded to the idea of a political representation of geographical districts instead of a representation of classes, and of like- minded groups of men generally, that we do not, as a rule, even consider the advisability of adopting proportional representation. Under that sys- tem, if there are one hundred legislators to be elected by one million voters, then any ten thousand voters, no matter where situate, would be qualified to elect their candidate. The advantage of proportional representation is that it gives representation, not only to the minority, but also, and even more effectually, to the majority. It puts a stop to gerrymandering, and by making legislators more truly representative of like-minded constituents, it allows men of conviction to take the places of our present eclectic and shrinking representatives. THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 317 during the constitutional period, just as the late Queen Victoria owed much of her popularity to a similar cause. Like the Republican Party the Constitution has profited by good crops and a boundless continent. If, however, it comes to be believed that whatever the plutocracy wants is constitutional and whatever we want is unconstitutional, — there will follow an astounding deliquescence of the wisdom of our ancestors. For the time being, the Constitution will probably change, as it has changed during the last century, by process of interpretation. Nine men, seated in the Supreme Court at Washington, hearing more or less distinctly the clamor of a hundred million people outside, judging more or less wisely of the constitutional needs of these hundred millions of people, will continue under the fiction of interpretation to adapt our century-old Constitution to our present needs. Upon these nine politically irresponsible men will rest a tremendous moral reponsibility. It is possible for them by a few progressive judicial decisions to democratize the Constitution. It is equally possible to evoke a dangerous constitutional conflict by a few reactionary decisions. It is to be hoped that as the years roll on the nine Supreme Court judges, making and remaking a Constitution for a hundred million people, will more and more feel the impact, the psychological attraction, of all these millions. It is to\ be hoped that the stamp of the popular will may be stamped on these nine minds as it is stamped upon the minds of, our presidential electors, upon our western legislators as- sembled to elect a United States senator, and to a less degree upon the minds of our Congressmen and of the President of the United States. We can reach to the Supreme Court only through a series of channels. But already it is evident that Presidents are becoming increasingly anxious to appoint justices who will meet with the approval of the nation, and that the senators, who confirm the appointments are / I 318 THE NEW DEMOCRACY . not entirely unsusceptible to similar influences. Direct \ election of senators should mean more democratic senators ; more democratic senators should mean more democratic Supreme Court justices ; more democratic justices should / mean a more democratic Constitution. 1 » All this is progress, but it is the progress of the child, -4- not of the adult nation. The Constitution should be re- vised by the people, A radical revision of the Constitution by a special constitutional convention, such as was contem- plated by the document itself, would be one of the greatest single steps towards establishing a political democracy in Lthe United States. An alternative step, perhaps even wiser, would be, not a obmplete transformation of the document, but a mere change (In the method of amendment,) a change which would make [future amendment easier and would give the power of 'proposing and of adopting amendments to the people, rather / than to legislatures, State and federal. Herein lies the scope of the constitutional initiative and referendum, which transcends the scope of the legislative initiative and referendum as the Constitution transcends a law. In changing our federal Constitution we should adopt a system similar to that adopted by the far more demo- cratic federal republic of Switzerland. A given number of qualified voters, let us say one or two millions, should be allowed to propose any constitutional amendment, which should then be voted upon (on a single day) by all the qualified voters of the nation, and should be considered carried and should be made a part of the Constitution of the United States if accepted by a majority of all the voters, as well as by a majority in a majority of all the States. Even with a constitution sensitive to the popular will, even with the referendum, initiative, and all the instruments and weapons of a pure political democracy, it would not follow that legislation would be in the interest of the people. THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 319 The referendum enables the people to decide. It does not make them decide wisely. Under a political democracy the people may vote in their own despite. They may be jingoistic, imperialistic, reaction- ary. They may vote themselves a king, with or without a title. They may break into warring factions, and, in the absense of unity, allow real sovereignty* to slip through their fingers. A nation in breechcloths, but without a king, is not a democracy. Neither is a nation with a twentieth century political democracy, but without the mind and the will to rule itself. / The end goal of the democracy is thus a social goal. It f is the improvement, physical, intellectual, and moral, of y the millions who make up the democracy. It is such an \ advancement and increase of the progressive masses that the gains made on the political and industrial fields may be increased, retained, and wisely utilized. CHAPTER XIX THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY fTlHE social goal of the democracy is the advancement and I improvement of the people through a democratization of the advantages and opportunities of life. This goal is to be attained through a conservation ofTife and health, Va democratization of education, a socialization of con- sumption, a raising of the lowest elements of the population to the level of the mass. The most elemental phase of this social policy is conserva-\ tion. The phrase "the conservation of human resources '/( has attained a considerable popularity because of the vogue of the analogous policy of the conservation of natural resources. But the word "conservation" is too narrow, for the demo- cratic ideal is not only to maintain, but vastly to -increase and improve, the life, health, intellect, character, and social qualities of the citizenry. This policy does not consider life solely from a quan- titative standpoint. The demand for large populations is not democratic in origin. It is the despot who wants soldiers; the business prince who wants cheap labor; the jingo who believes in a swaggering, fighting nation. In democratic countries, on the other hand, a decrease in the birth rate has accompanied an improved education, a more diffused comfort, and a rise in the general standard of living. The more advanced the country, the section, or the social class, the more marked in general has been the tendency away from the old blind propagation of the species, ff he democracy does not desire that life be given to so many that the gift becomes of no value.j It does not wish to see a 320 THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 321 swarming population pressing upon the means of subsistence. It desires a full life for all who are born, but it does not measure national success by the numbers who are born. This distinction between the number and the value of lives explains one of the most curious anomalies of modern democratic policy. Although the democracy is beginning to desire rather a lessened than an increased birth rate, it demands absolutely that every child born shall have a chance to live. The basis of democratic strivings toward human conservation is an ethical belief in the sanctity of human life, and the desire for an equality in this universal possession, ttife is the one thing which all have in common ; and while the expectation of life is by no means equal as between social classes, it is far more equal than is property, education, political power, or economic opportunitiesT? How far we still are from any real equality even in the probable years of our lives is seen in our statistics of accidents and of preventable diseases, which reveal our social reckless- ness toward our very poor. It is the poor who die young. It is the poor who die of preventable diseases, or are killed by accidents and by dangerous occupations and poisonous foods. When society fails in its duties, the poor die. And the more the poor die, the more poor there remain. /To save life involves a social intelligence and a social Conscience. Our ideas of protecting life are as yet rudi- mentary. We do not permit a man to put arsenic in his neighbor's coffee nor a stiletto in his neighbor's side, but we have only begun to prevent the selling of " embalmed beef" and other deadly foods, and we still permit the killing of workmen and workwomen by means of lead, phosphorus, and unf ended machinery. We do not allow a man to contract to commit suicide, but we not only permit, we actually pre- suppose, a contract by which the workman in a dangerous occupation assumes the " ordinary risks" of the trade. As for the tens of thousands of infants who annually die of 322 THE NEW DEMOCRACY bad milk and bad houses, we do not even know that they die (needlessly. A large part of our unprevented mortality is due to our fearful national heedlessness. Just as for years we have sacrificed thousands of lives to our Fourth of July barbarities, so we have annually sacrificed other thousands to our desire to cross railway tracks, and to our general willingness "to take a chance." But behind this recklessness, individual^ and social, there remains the desire of individuals to profit at the expense of the people, whether the price is paid in J life, or in health, comfort, and money. The railroad runs its/ locomotives through the heart of a metropolis, and only accepts automatic couplers after years of obstruction. The manufacturer insists upon leaving his machinery unguarded ; the great mining company upholds its right to neglect the most elementary and least costly of safety devices. In our mines, railroads, and factories we kill two, three, and five times as many workmen per thousand as do other nations ; and in many industries and in many States we do not even trouble to count the slain. We are still unwilling to pay for the complete sanitation of a city, for the uprooting of tuber- / culosis, for the distribution of proper milk to infants, or for a st civilized housing policy which would lessen the disgraceful ; ^mortality of certain districts of our large cities. Everywhere we are halted in our progress towards the conservation of the fives and health of all the people by \the obstruction of interested persons and by considerations of cost. We save pennies to individuals and cause society to lose pounds by our petty savings of money at the expense of life and health. On a mere calculation of dollars and cents, it is a foolish extravagance to allow a baby to die for lack of a few dollars' worth of pure milk, or to allow an expensively bred workman to die for lack of a few hundred dollars spent in protection and prevention. 1 But we do not yet realize 1 Every preventable death is a reflection upon the good will or the in- THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 323 that it is we as a community who pay for these deaths, al- though we only too clearly realize that it is we who pay for their prevention. /In contrast with our old attitude of tolerance for social assassination, however, we are now beginning an energetic campaign of human conservation. We are instituting ex- cellent and, in many places, free hospital and dispensary service. We are making nurse and doctor public servants, and are introducing them into the public schools. We are fighting typhoid fever with uncontaminated water supplies, and tuberculosis not only by a direct attack but with im- proved housing and factory conditions. We are improving city and State Boards of Health and are striving for a National Board of Health, which shall supervise the general health conditions of the nation. In our cities we are pro- viding public parks, public recreation centers, public baths. Our city and State authorities are doubling the protection of the milk, meat, and other foods of the people. Our fac- tory legislation and our laws regulating dangerous occupa- tions have resulted in a considerable saving of life, while our laws against child labor have had an enormously bene- ficial effect. All of which changes, together with a rapid advance in sanitary science and a vast improvement in the standards of living of the people, have resulted in a rapid de- cline in the death rate, especially in the cities. After all this progress, however, we are still only in the beginning of our democratic campaign of life-saving. To conserve life and health, society must enormously increase its efforts along present lines and must open up new routes of progress. We must organize the campaign on State (and national) lines. Sooner or later we must insure our popu- telligence of the community which suffers it. Society should regard every death below the age of sixty as a subject of serious thought. There should be a coroner's inquest when a man dies of typhoid fever or lead poisoning. Dying young should be forbidden by law. 324 THE NEW DEMOCRACY lations against sickness, accident, and invalidity, and must devote enormous sums to the prevention of these calamities. The advantage of an obligatory, universal state insurance is not only that it changes one's unknown individual lia- bility for a known social liability, but also that it compels society to recognize that it itself is the loser from each pre- ventable death and each preventable sickness. When the State of New York makes itself financially responsible for the health and lives of ten or twenty millions of citizens, it will be willing to spend money to prevent sickness and death. To secure the health and lives of the people we must socialize the business of health-keeping. It would pay us in the higher efficiency and better tone of the community to spend annually hundreds of millions of dollars of public money upon the prevention and cure of disease. Once we regard the health of the population as a social instead of merely as an individual asset, when we come to consider the maintenance of the citizen's health as a social duty rather than as a personal prerogative, we shall have enormously advanced towards a healthy and prosperous community. 1 The lessening of the infantile death rate (combined with a lessening of the birth rate) is a sign that we are already making progress in the conservation of life. The birth of babies who die in infancy is a pitiable social waste. If a high death rate of babies meant a selection of the socially fittest, if it were a subtle eugenic plan of nature, it might be worth all it costs in misery. In present circumstances, however, the death of babies is as arbitrary as decimation. 1 Our poverty, while a cause of illness, is largely a consequence of illness and of early (preventable) death. Much of the misery of the great cities affects the widows and orphaned children of men who died young, the wives and children of sick men, and people of both sexes and all ages who have become permanently debilitated as a result of illnesses which need never have been contracted. THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 325 The economic position of the baby, not its inherited qualities, constitutes its chief danger or immunity. Like the newborn infant, so the growing child is accorded an ever widening protection. Instruction becomes com- pulsory and universal. The free school, through the kin- dergarten, reaches out towards babyhood and, through the high school, to adolescence. The state, as guardian, in- creases its authority, as the paternal authority weakens. Wide programs of child welfare work are proposed and pro- I gressively executed. The greatest revolution of the last 'half century is the revolution in the status of the child. Similarly, in the interest of human conservation we must rectify or totally destroy our parasitic trades. There are two more or less distinct classes of parasitic industries ; those which prey upon other industries, and those which prey upon human life. An industry is parasitic in this latter sense in proportion as it directly or indirectly, increases sickness, produces deterioration, or shortens life. It is in the sweated trades that the labor of women and children (especially of immigrant women and children) is most harshly exploited. In the making of artificial flowers, in the sorting of rags, in the fabrication of many articles of clothing, the work is carried on under the worst possible hy- gienic conditions for a derisory wage, in the interest of a cheap product. From the point of view of society this cheapness is dear- ness and sheer wastefulness. It would be wiser to pay a few cents a gross more for our artificial flowers. It would be cheaper to pay our bounty in dollars than in the life and health of the workers. To cure the evils of parasitic trades we must have re- ourse to legislation. We cannot trust that the exploiters (themselves for the most part exploited) will desist from their profits. A parasite which had compunctions about conveniencing its host would be likely to succumb. 326 THE NEW DEMOCRACY What is necessary is a wide extension both in the appli- cation and in the principles of our factory laws. We must extend the signification of the word " parasitic." We must come to regard as parasitic, not only those industries which destroy women and little children, but also those which, though paying high wages, have an unnecessarily high mor- tality or morbidity rate, and also those which, because of long hours, excessive strain, or for other causes, do not permit a reasonable development of the personality of the workers. We must regulate factory conditions for men, women, and children, and we must so change our legal traditions as to permit the state to establish, not only maximum hours of k labor of men, but also, in the worst-paid trades, minimum wages. The conservation of human resources is a step towards the equalization of the chances of life and health of the citizens. The democratization of education is a step to- wards the equalization of the chances of intellectual development. A progressively diffused education is necessary to the >S. maintenance of the democracy. A political democracy may "be reactionary in its industrial and social policies, and the people may secure control both of the state and of industry without knowing enough to turn such control to their ad- vantage. To maintain itself, the democracy must use its powers to still further educate and strengthen itself. There was a time, in the optimistic days preceding the French Revolution, when men believed that no long training would be necessary to teach men to rule. The people would attain their full intellectual and moral stature as soon as po- litical tyranny was destroyed. Democracy was in its youth. It was violent, hopeful, moody. It saw visions. It had a touching faith in many beatitudes. It believed that all men were by nature good ; that all ills were due to civiliza- tion—to law, government, titles of nobility, small clothes, /I THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 327 and small talk. Civilization, being but an excrescence upon nature, might be excised. The bitter, million-year-old world would become young and sweet again. The masses of the oppressed would become wise and temperate men ruling themselves by the light of reason. Unfortunately the hopes of the eighteenth-century philos- ophers were not entirely realized. Skulls are desperately obstinate things, and unreasonable convictions have a woe- ful longevity. Ignorance, superstition, reaction, crushed to earth, rose again — and again. The peasants, after emanci- pation, did not become philosophers. > Our more sober democracy of to-day has a less absolute naith in the immediate perfectibility of man. It realizes Vthat men's minds change slowly, and that much education and much time are required. We realize, to-day, that just as the people have not all the vices, so also they have not all the virtues, ascribed to them. They are not so arbitrary, undisciplined, ignorant as was predicted. Nor are they so public-spirited. The average man does not cheerfully give up his holiday to serve on a jury, and the average housewife is more anxious to secure a good servant than to have the Panama Canal finished. The people are often too patient or too passionate. They are often too belligerent. The most diverse classes are united upon the policy of educating the whole people because upon that education depends the safety of the various groups which constitute the nation. The very possibility of misrule by a passionateX accidental majority is the saving menace of a democracy/ It is this menace which crumbles our intellectual snobbery nd abases our intellectual pride. For, if we are to have universities, and the universities are to receive public funds, not only must the learned come from their cloisters (as to so large an extent they have already done), but they must appeal to a population sufficiently intelligent and cultured to appreciate learning and culture. In a democracy, wherein 328 THE NEW DEMOCRACY a real political power (including a real control over industry) extends downwards to the masses of the people, it is mani- festly impossible to give a monopoly of any of the benefits of life to any one class. For the sake of the cultured, the .masses must have the opportunities of culture. ot only is an extension of education indispensable to the maintenance of a socialized democracy, but it is precisely in a democracy that education is most necessary to a high national efficiency. Education reacts powerfully upon the roduction, distribution, and consumption of wealth. There is no private industry in the United States which pays as high dividends as does the business of furnishing the proper education to the proper persons. If the government were annually to give free agricultural and industrial instruction to hundreds of thousands of youths (and were actually to pay them to attend school), the increase in the productive- ness of the farms and factories would more than pay for the expenditure. / f We have already taken many steps towards the sociali- / zation of education, but we are still far from the ideal of a / society in which all forms of education are entirely accessible x. to all qualified citizens. We should have free education ^from kindergarten to university for all children and youths who are willing and able to follow the courses, and we should have scholarships and scholar pensions for all capable scholars who have not the means to abstain from gainful work. All this would of course cost money, especially if we not only increased the quantity, but raised the quality, of our education, but there is no better way in which the increased wealth of the country could be invested. 1 1 Many pressing educational reforms, such as the increase in the number of teachers, the raising of the standards of teachers, improvements in methods and equipment, are chiefly held back by considerations of cost. Whether or not the federal government, with its far greater resources, should aid in the extending of'school facilities in poor districts is a question which deserves far more consideration than it has received. It is un- THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 329 The higher education of the multitude, the granting to men who will become farmers, carpenters, typesetters, perhaps even hodcarriers, of what would be an equivalent of a high school (or even of a modern college) education, would create a revolutionary force in the community of astounding power and magnitude. It would be a force which would act increasingly until our society had become entirely different from any in the history of the world. Not only would such an absolute democratization *of all ^forms of education enormously hasten economic and politi- i cal control by the masses, but it would render that control permanent and beneficent. ^ The future education of the masses, however, should not be the traditional, Procrustean, unrelated, and undiffer- entiated education of yesterday, but an education which fully equips the child for his industrial, political, and social life. For too long the school has been half asylum, half penitentiary. For too long it has stood alone in irrelevant isolation, knowing neither factory nor farm, neither kitchen nor voting booth. For much too long it has been a place where ignorance has taught ignorance, where individuality has been weeded and crushed out. The progress already made towards a differentiate* modernized education, bearing upon all essential phases oi humanity and nurturing all socially valuable individualities must be indefinitely continued. Our future education must exalt social obligations above mere competitive egoisms. Our new education must expand beyond our expanding schools. It must flow over into the library, the newspaper, the club, the factory. It must be an education which will aid society in the conservation of the life and the health of the citizens and in their progressive development. It must doubtedly true that the intellectual progress of. the nation is hampered by the arrested educational development of the poorer of our Southern States. 330 THE NEW DEMOCRACY aid men in their industrial pursuits, in their political activi- ties, and in their private life outside of industry and politics. It must guide society and individuals in the wise consump- tion of wealth. To socialize production we must also socialize consump- tion. We are entering into an age where men will suffer more from an injudicious, than from an insufficient, con- sumption of wealth. Food, clothes, books, tools, utensils, amusements, are already pouring in on us at an unprece- dentedly rapid rate; and we are consuming without judgment, without moderation, without regard to our individual in- terests or to the interests of society. Much of this con- sumption is absolutely noxious. To-day more Americans are seriously injured by an unwise consumption of wealth and by an inept use of leisure than by overwork or by evil conditions of work, although the latter, to a considerable extent, induce the former. i The importance of socializing consumption becomes quite evident when we reflect upon the enormous revenu^ which under a socialized production would come to the peoV pie. A billion dollars saved from banal and pleasure-de-\ stroying consumption is a billion dollars — and more — saved. ^ We do not often realize the extent of this waste. What has been called the anarchy of production is order superlative in comparison with the prevailing anarchy of consumption. Competition has been carried over from the making of goods to the using of them. Much of our expenditure is a pure competition of display. Fashion, conspicuous waste, absurd extravagance, even among the poor, destroy an astonishing proportion of the national product. The pleasure of Ameri- cans consists largely in the breaking of expensive toys. Much of this unwise and antisocial consumption of\ wealth is due to ultra-individualism. In consumption, meir lack the discipline and coordination which they have learned in production. Moreover, there is manifested in THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 331 consumption a certain instinctive conservatism, which lies deep in all of us. The man who follows every craze and fad, buying when the crowd buys and forgetting when the crowd forgets, is a timorously conservative consumer of wealth. There are women who are heterodox in religion, politics, and cooking, who nevertheless dare not wear a small hat when other women wear their hats large. / To a considerable extent, mere economic pressure and /stimulus may be relied upon to break this conservatism of ( consumption. The "flat" displaces the house when rents \and housemaid's wages rise, and apartment hotels become patronized (and liked) by people who a few years earlier could not have been induced to enter them. The number of persons sleeping out of doors increases far more slowly than does the knowledge that this habit is beneficial; but the multitudes who use safety razors, phonographs, tele- phones, cameras, and other advertised wares grow with astounding rapidity. The advertisements in magazines and newspapers are thus a better index of the contempo- raneous civilization than are the articles and editorials. Unfortunately, however, business cannot always be relied upon to socialize production. It acts equally in the opposite direction by producing articles which are deleterious and absurd, and with no other merit than that of being a link in an endless chain of tasteless ostentation. 'To socialize our consumption we must therefore depend Cupon the direct or indirect action of the state and upon the gradual education of the consumers. We cannot of course invert to sumptuary laws, for nothing would so increase the demand for ostrich feathers as a law forbidding their use to persons "of low degree." We can, however, forbid the unregulated sale of such articles as opium and cocaine, and we may somewhat reduce the consumption of alcohol ! and 1 The extreme difficulty of the problem of socializing our consumption is illustrated in the history of our liquor traffic. For too long we have 332 THE NEW DEMOCRACY tobacco by levying a tax upon their manufacture or sale. The renting (and therefore the using) of insufficient or in- sanitary housing accommodation may be rigorously forbid- den by law, and a definite irreducible minimum of quality may be established for all foods bought by the people. The state can also socialize consumption by furnishings a larger number of common goods. By "common goods" is here meant those commodities and services which are fur- nished to the citizens in their individual capacity freely, though the citizens pay for them in their collective capacity, j To an ever increasing extent the state (national, State, and/ municipal) is spending for all of us. It is far better that the people of a city, enjoy a large park than that a hundred citizens have private parks and a hundred thousand have none. Much of this governmental expenditure (notably that for army, navy, etc.) is still unwise and primitive, but gradually the socially useful expenditure increases. Ex- penditure by government has the advantage of being non- competitive as between individuals. It has the advantage of buying for the community things which the individuals cannot buy for themselves. It is better regulated. It is on the whole more economical. It gives a greater pleasure per unit of cost, because it is so largely a rendering of satis- factions wholesale instead of retail. The influence of education upon national consumption is potent and pervasive. Through education we may some- followed a purely instinctive policy. Prohibition laws are passed and left unenforced, so that "the women have their law and 'the boys' have their whiskey." We incarcerate inebriates for a day or two and discharge them with a thirst, or we send them from court with a three-dollar fine or a semi- humorous reprimand. We have only begun as a nation to learn the inter- actions between alcoholism, on the one hand, and insanity, feeble-minded- ness, child mortality, tuberculosis, and other diseases, prostitution, suicide, unemployment, poverty, and national inefficiency. We are only begin- ning to trace much of our alcoholism to poverty and much to a starved intellectual life. After decades of striving, we are still at the beginnings of a solution. THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 333 what discourage the elephantiasis of consumption to which our present taste runs. 1 Through education we may throw the emphasis upon those economic satisfactions which may- be had jointly as opposed to other satisfactions which are personal and exclusive. In educating society to socialize its consumption, moreover, we shall in turn socialize our production, some of the worst evils of which result from our undisciplined consumption. The article of consumption most often neglected is leisure. Leisure is an indispensable element to all enjoy- ment. It is the thing in which the American, despite his overflowing wealth, is the poorest. Americans have never taken time and still do not take time for leisure. We seek to telescope our pleasures, to enjoy much in little time. As a nation we are like the in- stantaneous American traveler who does the Louvre in an hour and the Vatican in half a morning. We are obsessed by the doctrine of a strenuous life, of a life of effort and labor, without leisure or quiet development. The American conception of leisure has always been one of mild disapprobation. There was rather a feeling that we should live to labor, not labor to live. This conception, which was more or less explicable during the days of the conquest of the continent, is not a little ludicrous to-day when advanced by the financier who is benefiting by our accumulating surplus. An austere disapprobation of holi- days is also given expression by many of our newspapers, and when, to please the Italian vote, a State legislature made Columbus Day a holiday, some of our journals preached eloquent sermons against idle workmen, supine legislators, and reckless Genoese sailors. In the eyes of 1 We may perhaps also expect a certain approach to a sanity of taste with a more assured income enjoyed for some time. Our present society runs to excess — not only because it is so obstinately competitive, but because we are still nouveaux riches. 334 THE NEW DEMOCRACY these journals and of many well-meaning manufacturers and professional men, the workman should prefer to work twelve hours instead of eight, if by working four hours more he earns more. 1 What is, however, more needed in America than almost anything else is a wider leisure and a better knowledge of how to use it. We need shorter hours for workman, mer- chant, banker, lawyer, doctor, engineer. The American who has made his money and now dies of ennui represents the situation at one end of the line ; the Polish workman in a steel mill who labors all day and every day, Sunday, week- day, and holiday, represents it at the other. Between the two we have the " ambitious, " "self-respecting" hard-work- ing man, with no idea but labor. What does he earn, this tame, virtuous, self -driven, over-ambitious drudge ? More dollars in the bank, fewer years of life, and fewer pleasures while he lives. Better a "sturdy beggar" or a vermin-in- fested tramp than a desiccated toiler who works twelve hours a day, seven days in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year. The democratic policies of conservation, education, and the socialization of consumption have one element in com- mon, a tendency to promote equality of opportunity. The same element appears in the fourth social policy of the democracy; in the policy of extending the advantages of progress and democratization to all groups in society. We may secure the life and health of the people. We may educate them and promote a wise and beneficent con- sumption of the fruits of the nation's labor. One ques- tion, however, remains. Who are to be the ultimate bene- ficiaries of all this progress ? Who are to be admitted to, 1 Professional men, not on salary, rarely care for fixed holidays, because to so large an extent they are masters of their own time and choose their own holidays. Workmen may not miss a day (without leave) and may not be late a minute. THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 335 and who are to be debarred from, the new civilization which is preparing ? It would be an easy problem for democracy if, as stand- ards rose, the whole of the people would rise with them. Under such conditions progress would be uninterrupted, equal, easy. Unfortunately, however, society bears with it always the burden of the submerged. The ignorant, in- competent, vicious, weak, the feeble-minded and feeble- willed we have always with us. We drag behind us the chain and ball of the ruthlessness of the past. The democracy, even when successful against the pretensions of privilege, finds itself opposed to the obstruction and dead weight of the nether world. There is a current theory that this nether world, left to itself, will destroy itself, and that in this destruction lies the salvation of the democracy. This theory, which is based on an assumed analogy between biological and social phenomena, asserts that progress, even under a democracy, can come only through a perpetual, rigorous weeding out of the unfit. Those who fall into crime, prostitution, and misery, those who fail to meet the standards set by the democratic majority, must die as the unfit have died for tens of thousands of centuries. Workhouses, jails, slums, hunger, disease, must be allowed to do their work. / If all the unfitness in society were due to heredity and none of it were due to social arrangements, if it were pos- sible painlessly to remove at each generation all who were indubitably unfit to survive and all who were indubitably unfit to propagate, we might perhaps resign ourselves to this recurring excision of the submerged. But all this is not possible. We are not sure even of our own standards of fitness. As we look over history, we see that men with certain instincts and capacities are regarded as noxious in orie generation and as social saviors in a second. There are,Mt is true, extreme cases in which we may act. We ta 336 THE NEW DEMOCRACY need not suffer the indiscriminate breeding of our hundreds of thousands of feeble-minded, nor of others with assured and ineradicable hereditary taints. But with our present knowledge we cannot go far in this direction. We can no more trust ourselves with any absolute dominion over life and death than we could trust the medieval scribes with the preservation of classical literature. That way lies too dead a uniformity, too brutal a tyranny of the present over the future. We dare not be overrash in the exter- mination of human types which deviate from an approved norm. We must preserve our hereditary heretics. No such annihilation of the dwellers of the nether world ever really takes place. The submerged social classes do not die, but merely become sick. And in their sickness they avenge themselves upon society, much as certain Orientals are supposed to do, by committing suicide on their oppressor's doorstep. The girl forced into prostitu- tion through society's carelessness is not without her revenge upon society. The boy who becomes a criminal, when with a little social wisdom he might have been a useful citizen, does not bear his burden alone. From the nether world spreads the virus of physical and moral contagion; and every immorality, bred of weakness, finds its ultimate victims both above and below the poverty line. The nether world does not die of mere social neglect, but, on the contrary, grows upon it. Although the mor- lity of the submerged is excessive, the nether world re- acts violently with a birth rate so high and desperate as to fill the gutters with hopeless children. Moreover the nether world grows by accretion. Democracy rests upon a mul- titude of restraints and inhibitions. The slum attacks these restraints and inhibitions. It furnishes company to those who are tempted to fall. The sight of the slum, the ex- ample of it, the direct teaching of it, draw ever new re- cruits. The slum becomes a rallying ground and an alter- THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 337 native to those who are hesitating on the verge of demo- cratic duties. As the tolerated nether world grows through immigra- tion from above, so also it grows through a continual shift- ing of the social boundary between it and the classes above. The attitude of mind which concurs in a division of human kind into the terrestrially saved and the terrestrially damned cannot but permit a similar division among the men above the slum. New sections of the community are left to themselves to work out their own destruction. The slum, increasing in size, increases its power of mischief. In a democracy in which it does not share, as in a plutocracy, the slum remains cynically corrupt. In the divisions which will arise in the differentiated democracy of to-morrow, the venal slum — if it survives — may well hold the balance of power. As to-day, so to-morrow, the slum may share in ruling. The problems and possibilities of the democracy in its relation to the nether world are not unlike the problems and possibilities of the trade-union in its relation to men incapable of earning union wages. As the labor organiza- tion raises the standard of remuneration of its members, the pressure upon workingmen unable to secure employ- ment at these wages increases, with a resulting deep em- bitterment. So long as the labor organization includes a majority of the more efficient men in the trade, it is able to profit by its victories. If, however, there grows up outside too large or too strong a body of non-unionists; if the union, instead of striving to become a majority, is content to re- main a minority, a mere closed corporation resisting infiltra- tion from below, — then the balance of power is likely to change. The rejected non-unionists may overrun the trade. The standards, so hardly won, may be abandoned. The union, defeated and brushed aside, may crumble and disintegrate. 338 THE NEW DEMOCRACY Like the union, the democracy must combat, with all the forces in its control, the growth of a disaffected group below its level. It must struggle, not only against the oligarchical few at the top, but against the creation of an anti-democratic helotry at the bottom. Like the union, it /cannot afford to increase its numbers by lowering its stand- ards, but through education, through social betterment, and through an active and persistent propaganda it must raise so many (if not all) of the submerged to its level as to render its own destruction impossible. Like the trade- union, the democracy must always be open at the bottom. The democracy is thus compelled to cure the slum to prevent its own destruction by the slum. Its instinct to live as well as its justice and clemency impel the democracy to this course. No democracy can be achieved, and no democracy, once achieved, can be maintained, except as the dead weight of the masses below the democratic levels ris progressively lightened. The policy of the democracy towards the submerged divides itself into three parts: first, the redemption of men who have fallen below the democratic levels; second, the utmost possible prevention of social failures, not by end- ing social contests, but by improving the contestants; third, the provision of a reasonably satisfactory situation for incorrigibles, and their effective isolation from the rest of society. This program of the democracy, which is the old pro- gram of human conservation upon a new level, is so wide- reaching that it is impossible to give within a small scope even the vaguest outlines of its main features. What we are chiefly seeking to do is to shut off all the channels which lead to the under world, to cure the slum at its hundreds of sources. Everywhere progress along these lines, though obstructed, is evident. Although the first juvenile court in the United THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 339 States was not established until 1899, the whole attitude of the nation towards the delinquent child has already been revolutionized, and the young boy who formerly would have been transformed into a criminal is now treated in many courts with tender solicitude and a far-seeing social wisdom. Our whole social attitude towards children, towards child labor, truancy, the neglect of children, is being changed. We are beginning to see that bad teeth in children, neglected adenoids, or starved little bodies may result in hundreds of thousands of social wrecks, and we are slowly bringing ourselves to face the stupendous problem involved in the neglected presence in our midst of blind, crippled, feeble-minded, and defective children. The de- mocracy is reaching out into the home, and the parental tyranny of former days is giving way to an enforced parental responsibility, based upon the inalienable and indestructible rights of the child. A hundred years ago, a father might with impunity beat, starve, or slowly kill his child, for a man could do what he wished with his own. To-day not only do we protect the child from the cruder forms of physi- cal violence, but we enter into degraded homes to save the child from underfeeding, physical or moral infection, and exposure to evil influences of all kinds. Where parents are too ignorant, too drunken, too immoral, or too dispirited to prevent their children from becoming a prey of the criminal slum, the State intervenes. A California law goes so far as to provide "that the expense of maintaining their own children may be allowed to parents out of the public funds at the discretion of the court, within the limits fixed by the law. 1 As the child is being saved from contamination, so on another plane the young girl is being protected from the 1 Breckinridge (Sophonisba P.), "The Community and the Child," The Survey, February 4, 1911, referring to the McCartney juvenile court law, Section 21. 340 THE NEW DEMOCRACY most debasing influences of our modern life. Gradually, though far too slowly, laws are being passed regulating the hours of labor of women, 1 forbidding night work and pro- hibiting the employment of women in certain dangerous and noxious trades. The magnificent upbuilding work of the Women's Trade Union League, which seeks to represent all the interests of all women employed in industry, is a force of tremendous moment in our struggle for democracy, and the analogous work of protecting and guiding immi- grant girls tends in the same direction. Numerous insti- tutions and societies arise for the purveying of amusement and recreation both to children and young folks, on the principle that all work and no play makes Jack not only a dull, but a vicious boy. CThe full brunt of the democratic campaign against the growth of an under world thus lies, not so much in the uplift of those who have fallen, as in the provision of con- ditions which prevent falling. "The new penology," says Dr. Edward T. Devine, "concerns itself less with what is done in penal and reformatory institutions and in courts — radical as are the changes which it would introduce there — than with agencies for prevention. Crime in the last analysis is not to be overcome after arrest, but before. Schools, churches, playgrounds, settlements, trade-unions, and charitable societies — agencies of social progress and of social reform, public and private — are the handmaidens of the new penology. We shall transform police, courts, and prisons when we have further transformed society, and the forces which help to raise and give stability and vitality to our standards of living and our standards of action are the forces to which in the end the bad features and the obsolete features of the existing penal system will yield. The environment is transformed by child labor laws 1 See the laws of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Illinois, Mis- souri, and other States. THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 341 and the protection of children, by housing laws and im- proved sanitation, by the prevention of tuberculosis and other diseases, by health-giving recreational facilities, by security of employment, by insurance against the fatalities of industry and the financial burdens of death and disease, by suitable vocational training, by all that adds to the content of human life and gives us higher and keener motives to self-control, strenuous exertion, and thrift. The strong- hold of crime is social misery. The cure for misery is better adjustment of social elements to one another and to the infinite possibilities of the environment." 1 The mere existence of a phrase like the "new penology' ' shows the changed spirit with which the rising democracy faces the submerged masses. We are still shamed by bad prisons, evil laws, and an absurdly inadequate criminal procedure. But we are slowly passing out of the old retali- atory attitude towards offenders. We are laying emphasis upon sane discipline, physical exercise, and the instruction and healthy employment of prisoners. We are attacking fixed sentences, solitary confinement, and inefficient inspec- tion of jails, and we are beginning to look upon the prison almost as an adjunct to the school. "The new penology," to quote Dr. Devine once more, "is not sentimental. . . . At least in its present transitional stage, the average term of restraint which it imposes is considerably longer than in the penal system which it displaces. It sentences, however, to a hospital by preference rather than to a dungeon. It sentences to cleanliness, good food, and wholesome disci- pline, and not to infection and degradation." 2 In the same way the clean, sanitary municipal lodging house of to- day, with its decent food and its enforced compensatory work, begins to take the place of the vermin-infected tramp lockup, in the congenial vileness of which hardened crim- 1 "The Correction and Prevention of Crime," The Survey, January 21, 1911. 2 Op. cit. 342 THE NEW DEMOCRACY inals instruct the ingenuous, occasionally unemployed, boy. Fundamentally the new attitude of the democracy towards the criminal and potentially criminal classes is one which is dictated by wisdom and a growing sense of social responsibility. To make outcasts of those who have once broken the law is to increase the number of society's enemies. Individual responsibility, it is true, cannot be done away with, but in the time to come the culpable individual will be allowed to plead the contributory neg- ligence of society. For every wayward man and woman, society must be called to the bar. In other words, society must prevent crime by promoting education and happiness, or must accept the underlying responsibility for its default. It must not " punish" the criminal or hunt him forever within society, but must offer to him a life which, though dependent and below that of the rest of the population, is at least secure, reasonably eligible, and with as little con- straint as is consistent with the safety of society and the education of the criminal. The democracy must not raise up enemies within its ranks. What applies to the incapables and the criminals, applies with even greater force to special groups who are separated from the rest of the population and are hated or despised. In America we have a racial problem of more fearful portent than that of any of the nations of Europe. We are still paying the endless price of slavery. The South is psycho- logically cramped. The North is bewildered. The Negro problem is the mortal spot of the new democracy. At the moment we are beset by the problem of Negro suffrage. It is being urged by a dominant school of thought that the immediate salvation of the Negro is less political | than economic, and that his possession of money and edu- cation (above all of technical and industrial education) will] eventually compel the grant to him of full political rights THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 343 at a time when he can best avail himself of them. This non-resistant attitude is hotly repelled by another group, who declare that Negro acquiescence in Negro disenfranchise- ment is a denial of democracy, a surrender to race prejudice, and an obstacle in the path of the accumulation of money and education, which is the very alternative proposed to political rights. "If we have not the vote," they say, "we shall have neither education nor justice; if we have not the vote, our schools will be starved and our farms and our jobs will be lost." Whatever the merits of this controversy as a matter of ethics or practical politics, it seems probable that the present democratic movement, uneasily recognizing this danger in its rear, will move forward, leaving the problem of Negro suffrage to one side. It is a sign of disillusionment. We look at the Negro vote in Philadelphia and Cincinnati, and wonder whether it is worth while to lay aside other problems to secure a Negro vote in Atlanta and Charleston. Thus it happens that men, animated by a spirit analogous to that which freed the slaves, are seeking to ignore the problem of Negro disenfranchisement. Even the Socialist party, which is a defender of desperate causes, seems to avoid the problem. It is perhaps possible to evade this issue of Negro suf- frage if we can satisfy ourselves that the vote is not imme- diately essential to Negro civilization; if we can honestly believe that the denial to the Negro of the vote is advan- tageous, not only to us, but to him. 1 We may not, however, presume to make the negro an "underman," to offer him a subhuman or a subcivilized life. For as he grows, the Negro, if he be not given, will take. Even as we advance, 1 If, as is claimed, the ballot is, at present, really disadvantageous to the Negro, we need not give it to him merely to be logical. But we shall do well to beware of sophistries intended merely to give a justification to our disinclination or fear of raising the issue. The mouse can find many reasons, philanthropic and other, for not belling the cat. 344 THE NEW DEMOCRACY hoping perhaps that the democracy won and wrought by the whites will descend as an easy heritage to the reen- franchised Negroes, we are oppressed by the dread of what may occur. There may arise a Negro consciousness, a dark sense of outraged racial dignity. There may come a stirring of a rebellious spirit among ten, or, as it soon will be, of twenty or thirty, million black folk. We cannot hope forever to sit quietly at the feast of life and let the black man serve. We cannot build upon an assumed superiority over these black men, who are humble to-day r but who to-morrow may be imperious, exigent, and proudly -ace-conscious. Moreover, a grave (though perhaps not a near) danger lies in a failure to grapple with the race problem. The time may come when the plutocracy, hard driven by the rising tide of the new democracy, may attempt to save itself by raising anew the question of the Negro's position in industry and politics. The best antidote to democracy is jingoism and race hatred. 1 It is an appeal from higher and newer tV lower and older instincts. It is an appeal which in America would open the dikes and let in the dark waters. The plutocracy, which has much to fear from a democrati- zation of politics and industry, would have nothing to fear from any Negro suffrage which it itself champions ; and it might have much to gain both from the votes and the labor of the grateful black men. If it be attempted to repress the Negroes, to show them their place, we may encounter the possibility of an incon- ceivably savage race war. If white men and black men were ever to fight on the old plantations of the South we should have an awakening of brutalities such as no war of 1 The ally of the reactionary is the "hereditary enemy." Once you can stir up race or national hatred, you have postponed your social develop- ment. If you can but hate a Spaniard or a Boer, you will for the time being cease to hate all public iniquity, however flaunting. THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 345 modern times has evoked. Even so trivial a thing as a prize fight between a Negro and a white man led recently to a disgusting subemotional debauch of tens of millions of us, and to a violent recrudescence of the lynching spirit. If there were ever a reign of terror throughout the Black Belt, if a few thousand white men and women were to be slaughtered by hordes of enraged Negroes, there would be a backwash of civilization, a recurrence of barbarism, which would reach to the furthermost hamlets of Maine and Oregon. And yet, if the democracy in America is to be a white democracy, and the civilization in America is to be a white civilization ; if it is proposed to make of the Negro a thing without rights, a permanent semiemancipated slave, a headless, strong-armed worker, then let the white civiliza- tion beware. We may sunder the races if we can ; we may preserve a race integrity if we can; we may temporarily limit the Negro's suffrage. If, however, we abate the ulti- ymate rights, prerogatives, and privileges of either race, if we seek permanently to set up lower standards for one race, we shall plant the seeds of our own undoing. Our self -protection, as much as our sense of justice, must impel us towards the increase in the Negro's ability, morale, and opportunity. Just as a diphtheritic Negro will infect a white man, just as the tubercle bacillus, oblivious of the color line, will go from the black man's home to the Aryan's, so weakness, immorality, ignorance, and recklessness will spread from one race to the other as a prairie fire spreads from farm to farm. Whether we love the Negro or hate him, we are, and shall continue to be, tied to him. If to-day our ten million American Negroes resided, not in the United States, but in a contiguous territory, asking for admission into the Union, it is extremely improbable that the mass of white men would permit the annexation. We might very well feel that, however engaging many of r 346 THE NEW DEMOCRACY the qualities of the Negroes are, and however much the present bitter racial antagonism may be allayed, it would be the part of folly to lay aside our own problems to take up new problems of racial adjustment. For the Negro's sake as well as for our own, we should prefer to stay apart. A somewhat analogous problem is presented by our in- creasing immigration. Here it is not a problem of racial hatred so much as it is one of economic and social adjust- ment. We need not claim a superiority over the people who throng in at Ellis Island. We may concede their splendid qualities, and still advance proposals for the stem- ming of this human flood. The policy of a restriction of immigration does not in- volve a disbelief in America's future. It does not base itself on the belief that the country is "full up." Under proper economic and social conditions, we could easily take care of two hundred, or even more, millions of people. The crux of the difficulty, however, is that a too speedy and unregulated immigration tends to prevent the very adjust- ments which would make the prosperity of the greater millions possible. For many decades Americans have hesitated to lay an embargo upon this inspiring westward movement. It was our proudest boast — our highest ideal — that America was to be the haven of the world's oppressed. So long as we had free lands in the West, so long as each new immigrant added inevitably to the wealth of his neighbors, this ideal was rooted in the economic conditions. But in the course of time we deeded away the continent which was to have been the home of the oppressed, and, year by year, we found it more and more impossible to deflect the broader stream of immigration from the congested districts of our cities. To-day the ideal is in conflict with our economic and political conditions. Failing its economic root, the ideal has degenerated into a tradition. iTHE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 347 In the next decade or two our intensifying struggle for democracy will render a further restriction of immigration imperative. The change will not be too violent, for our present residents will somehow smuggle in their nearest relatives, and there will always be openings in the gate. But when we illogically and brutally, though wisely, for- bade the immigration of the Chinese, we made an unheal- able breach in the rule of hospitality, and gave a precedent and a colorable pretext for future restrictions. It is significant, to-day, that many of the people who are opposed to a practically unregulated immigration are the very ones who are seeking to promote the welfare of those immigrants who are already in. The policy of the democ- racy towards immigration is coming to be one of a check- ing of the rapidity of the flow, a selection of the best candi- dates for admission, and the quickest and most thorough possible preparation of the accepted immigrants for the duties of American citizenship. ( The danger to the Ameri- can experiment in democracy of too near a contact with European poverty can hardly be overestimated.! If, during the next fifty years, we receive thirty or even fifty millions of unsifted newcomers from Europe, we may find ourselves but little further advanced in democracy after that period than before. If, on the other hand, we so limit immigration that but five or ten millions enter — and if these five or ten millions be people especially selected for their adjust- ability to American conditions, we may so far advance in the task of improving the economic, political, and psy- chological development of the masses as to render inevi- table the progressive attainment of the social goal of the democracy. v CHAPTER XX CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? WHEN we review American history from the Declaration of Independence to these days, we find that we neither possess a socialized democracy, nor have we lost one. Neither in 1776 nor in 1789 did we have institutions, conditions, or habits of mind upon which such a socialized democracy could have been built. Our conquest of the Continent, though essential to national expansion, and even to national survival, did not aid such a democracy, except in so far as it provided for it an eventual material basis. On the contrary, the economic, political, and psychological developments inseparably connected with the struggle with the wilderness worked against the immediate attainment of a socialized democracy, and led to wild excesses of individualism, which in turn culminated in the growth of a powerful and intrenched plutocracy. We are now beginning to realize that our present acute social unrest is not due to an attempt to return to the condi- tions and principles of the eighteenth century, but is merely a symptom of a painfully evolving democracy, at once indus- trial,political, and social. We are beginning to realize that our k stumbling progress towards this democracy of to-morrow re- sults from the efforts, not of a single class, but of the general community ; that the movement is not primarily a class war, ^y but, because it has behind it forces potentially so overwhelm- ing, has rather the character of a national adjustment ; that the movement does not proceed from an impoverished people, nor from the most impoverished among the people, nor from a people growing, or doomed to grow, continually poorer, 348 CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 349 fbut -proceeds, on the contrary, from a population growing Hn wealth, intelligence, political power, and solidarity. We are awakening to the fact that this movement, because of the heterogeneous character of those who further it, is /tentative, conciliatory, compromising, evolutionary, and J legal, proceeding with a minimum of friction through a series 1 of partial victories; that the movement is influenced and \colored by American conditions and traditions, proceeding, /with but few violent breaks, out of our previous industrial, / political, and intellectual development and out of our mate- / rial and moral accumulations, and utilizing, even while I reforming and reconstituting, our economic and legal machin- ery. It is a movement dependent upon a large social sur- plus; a movement whigh grows in vigor, loses in bitterness, and otherwise takes its character from the growing fund of j6\xr national wealth, which gives it its motive and impetus. / Finally, it is a movement which in the very course of its fulfillment develops broad and ever broadening industrial, political, and social programs, which aim at the ultimate I maintenance of its results. \ The question, however, remains, Can such a democracy Endure? Are there in society forces making for the per- manency of such a high democratic civilization, once at- tained ? We may well walk warily in this problem, since its con- sideration involves matters of which we cannot surely know. The telling of society's fortune — what one may call social astrology — results in a prophecy which is in part a reflex of the prophet's personality and is in part determined by what the credulous patron likes to hear. Even if we substitute for pure prophecy a reasoned social projection, — a mental carry- ing out of forces already at work, — we advance but little along the path of authority. Our data are too few. We are all — pessimists and optimists alike — but clamorous spec- tators before a curtain which is just rising. We see the feet, 350 THE NEW DEMOCRACY not the faces, of the actors, and we can guess only rudely at the play which is going on. What consideration we give to the problem must be accompanied by an admission that from any real knowledge of the future workings of democratic principles we are as far removed as are they whose opinions we repel. There are many men, expurgated democrats, who, while they desire a certain extension of democracy, fear its com- plete rule more than they fear the rule of tyrant or dictator. They look into the face of the new monarch and are afraid. They listen to the prophetic flatteries of popular courtiers, who appeal to the most brutish instincts of the Demos. They call the rule of the millions, not a democracy, but an " och- locracy." They expect from this rule, not civilization, but decivilization. This fundamental dread of democracy lies in the supposed incurability of its errors. In every other form of government there is some sort of quasi-appeal from the minority to the residual right of revolution of the majority. But in a de- mocracy there is no appeal from the majority. Only under a democracy can a nation commit suicide. / There is a certain lack of robustness in all these fears ; a certain oversophistication of men who forget of what tough, resistant fiber our million-year-old race is made. We have survived worse evils than the worst with which we are now threatened, and we shall doubtless evade the " logically inevitable" results of democracy, as we have evaded the logi- cally inevitable results of every other system of government and society. A democracy threatened with war, hunger, or national extermination would instinctively change under the stress. It would evolve vigilance committees, committees of public safety, temporary dictators, who, if the conditions demanded it, would become permanent. Democracy is not perpetual except in so far as it promotes race survival. It is an experiment, as fire and clothes and science and religion CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 351 are experiments. It is our present hope that democracy has many centuries in which to develop, and that nothing but a dissipation of our material natural resources can produce the threatened decivilization. If, however, for any reason de- mocracy becomes incompatible with progress and happiness, s it will simply cease. The supposed incompatibility of democracy with progress rests on the assumption that democracy means an intoler- able " tyranny of the majority" over the minority, of the ignorant over the wise, of the careless over the prudent, of the mediocre over the men of genius and spirituality. It is feared that democracy would perpetuate ignorance, would worship an unnatural equality, would despise liberty and the development of individuality. This accusation has its basis in several concepts; firstly, that the ruling mass of society is and would continue to be ignorant, besotted with a sense of its knowledge, jealously hating men of larger in- telligence, and hating to hear Aristides called the Just; secondly, that this mass holding the reins of power and rul- ing by its own ignorance, would have no reason to educate itself or to permit or reward education in others. In other words, having no intellectual class to act upon it, it would remain intellectually inert, an undrained, dismal bog of human ignorance. These assumptions prove on analysis to be arbitrary. The sullen jealousy against intelligence found in certain sec- tions of all populations seems due, in part at least, to an ig- norance born of evil social conditions, and directed against men who have had better intellectual, because they have had better economic, opportunities. But the mass of Americans cannot by the wildest exaggeration be placed in this mental state, and the eyes of America, as of the world, are set towards a greater and more diffused education. The very lessening of pecuniary differences would inevitably set up competitions upon other planes, notably upon the plane of intellectual 352 THE NEW DEMOCRACY development. The more (though not necessarily the most) intelligent would inevitably exercise a dominating influence over the less intelligent. Then, as now, a relatively high degree of intelligence among millions of people would be necessary to the welfare, even to the very existence, of the community, and then, as now, even the ignorant voter would know when things went ill with him. Both the opportunities and the desires of men would spur them to greater efforts, so that a general intelligence of the whole community on a level with that of the more intelligent tenth of society to-day would be well within the range of possibility. The more intelligent could not rule except through the great mass, but the incen- tive and, above all, the opportunities of the mass would be greatly increased. / To-day a part of our educational initiative is due to social capillarity, to a desire to rise from one social or economic class to another. But such desires and such opportunities would also exist under a socialized democracy. No social organization has the remotest chance of establishment which is not based on the fullest recognition of the inherent ine- qualities of men, and of the infinitely wide range of human tastes, capacities, and aptitudes. What a socialized democA racy demands is an equalization, not of men, but of oppor- \ tunities, although by raising the status of the lowest, it re- duces by comparison the material rewards of the successful. > Its effect, however, should on the whole be an increase rathe^ than a decrease in the competition for the superior positions^ To-day, to employ a certain exaggeration, the son of a banker becomes a banker much as the Prince of Wales becomes king of England. The chance of a banker's son becoming a hodcarrier is only a little less than the chance of the hod- carrier's son becoming a banker. The competition for the superior position and the competition for the education which will qualify for the superior position are very much less in our wealth-stratified society of to-day than they would be in a CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 353 socialized democracy, in which the fullest conceivable oppor- tunities would be accorded to all. To use a loose illustration, the establishment of a socialized, differentiated democracy should have the same influence upon education and the/ struggle for a favored position as has the establishment of competitive civil service examinations for positions which formerly went by favor. ^+**S f The fear of a destruction of human liberty seems equally unfounded. It is true that a democracy which did not have its basis in economic and social needs might possibly re- strict liberty, for essentially unstable governments can only I maintain themselves — and that only temporarily — by encroachments upon the rights of the citizens. If, however, we assume that a socialized democracy is the best form for attaining the material welfare of the majority, and if by liberty we mean the right to do things which one should have the right to do, then there is no reason why a socialized democracy should not mean an increase, rather than a de- crease, in the sum total of liberty. Much of our complaint about the restriction of liberty is an echo from the forest, a belated cry from the old pioneer period. It is true that many absurd laws restrictive of liberty are annually enacted. But a real need of re- strictive legislation results from the greater density of our population and the increasing number of social liens and contacts. On the frontier addiction to a phonograph is a habit which may well be left to the individual and his con- science. In a membranous New York apartment house a man's unregulated right to indulge his musical tastes may run counter to his neighbor's equal right to sleep soundly of nights. The city, the factory, the trust, the huge fortune have given birth to a host of possible offenses which did not before exist. Moreover, as has already been pointed out, economic freedoms can often only be attained by legal pro- hibitions, and what is often interpreted as a limitation of 2a 354 THE NEW DEMOCRACY freedom is in effect an increase of liberty, through the pro- tection of some individuals from the hitherto permitted aggressions of others. Unfortunately, there are only two \ means of preserving the citizens' liberty — education anjk - the policeman's club. The prohibition of employing chil- dren in factories, while it may in individual cases adversely affect a child or its parents, is so protective of the rights of children as a whole that it is as much an increase in the liber- ties of the citizens as is the prohibition of counterfeiting, wife beating, and highway robbery. Under a socialized democracy, we shall have an increase in the amount of educa- tion, in the number of legal inhibitions, and in the sum total (of the liberties of the citizens. All these arguments are adduced against democracy on the ground that it is too evil to survive. An equally in- veterate argument is advanced that it is "too good to be true." Seemingly illogical as is this argument, there is, nevertheless, a certain basis for it in our past experience. We have never had a Utopia, though we have often dreamed that we were on the verge of one. Mankind "never is, but always to be, blest." A perfect state of terrestrial bliss, a lying down together of the human lion and the human lamb, is as remote from our racial experience as is the collision of sun and moon. The mortal defect of Utopias is that they are too static. The kingdom of heaven on earth is always a permanent, unchanging, perfect, and unutterably stupid place, than which our present society, with all its imperfections, is vastly superior. Utopias break down because they represent attainment, fulfillment. But society does not strive towards fulfillment, but only towards striving. It seeks not a goal, ibut a higher starting point from which to seek a goal. / Opposed to such Utopias our present ideal of a social- ized democratic civilization is dynamic. It is not an CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 355 idyllic state in which all men are good and wise and in- sufferably contented. It is not a state at all, but a mere direction. J / 1 Were we to move into a democratic, socialized civiliza- tion, where misery had become as unknown as witchcraft to-day; where the people, educated and in process of educa- tion, ruled in their own interest both in industry and politics; where the common wisdom of a nation was united to solve common problems and work out a common destiny, we should still be faced by problems new and old. We should carry into the new civilization the tenacious appetites of to-day. We should struggle along with human frailties, with a residual ignorance, perverseness, meanness of outlook, exaggerated egotism. With the raising of the standard of life we should awaken new appetites and stimulate present ones. Our racial hatreds, our inveterate race animosities, would give way but slowly, so that even in a society advanced in civilization, lynchings and other horrible reversions to barbarism might occasionally occur. We may not hug the illusion of an instantaneous change in the old clinging evils. Drunkenness, prostitution, and a whole series of vices which are but pathological social forms of normal human instincts will but slowly give way. " Virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it." With all these evils we need not now concern ourselves. It will be a wonderful advance in society when our crimes and vices will be crimes and vices of prosperity instead of those of poverty. We may confidently face the new, un- known dangers of prosperity with the powers and knowledge which that prosperity will bring. For this century we need but take this century's forward step. If we can extirpate misery, that will be progress enough. By the rigorous Malthusians, we are told that even this more moderate program is now and forevermore impossible. We are warned that a democracy which gives an assured 356 THE NEW DEMOCRACY income to all will stimulate our lax and thoughtless millions to so rash a procreation as to cause society to expand beyond the food supply necessary for its support. Forty years ago this dreadful threat of human fecundity still lay like an incubus upon the souls of all social reformers. Malthus was the prophet. We saw the nations growing daily in population. France and Ireland were exceptions, but France was alleged to be decadent, and distressful Ireland was admittedly bleeding through emigration. But since the eighties the birth rate in one nation after another, Eng- land, Scotland, Wales, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, etc., has declined, and to-day we are spectators of a world-wide decrease in natality in almost all nations and in almost all sections of all nations. The more democratic and advanced nations seem on the whole those whose birth rate has most rapidly fallen. If the birth rate continues to de- cline (even though the decline in the death rate also con- tinue), the danger of decivilization through overpopulation will be completely dissipated. According to others the menace to democracy lies less in the fear of overpopulation than in that of depopulation. Numbers are an element (although only one element) of national power. Democracy, with its high national pro- ductiveness, may mean a capacity for sustaining larger popu- lations, but the individual ambitions and the higher stand- ards of living among a democratic population may result in an excessive and debilitating slackening of the rate of in- crease and in a lessened fighting capacity, which, until world- wide changes have worked themselves out, must remain the ultimate determinant between rival civilizations. It is conceivable that frugal, prolific, and undemocratic civiliza- tions will become the most formidable. There may possibly come a time when a hundred million highly cultivated Ameri- cans may be threatened by half a billion well-armed, well- organized, prolific, and abstemious Celestials, as Gaul was CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 357 threatened and at last overrun by the Franks, and Britain by the Saxons and Danes. That this' problem, like others, may some day arise to tax the resources and the wisdom of an American democracy cannot to-day be gainsaid. If democracy means a lessened population, and that in turn means a lessened capacity for defense, then in future generations we may well be forced to accommodate our further progress in democratic evo- lution to that which is made to other formidable nations. For the time being, however, the danger is too shadowy and hypothetical to justify any slackening of our progress towards a socialized democracy. We need not put on our armor for battles which our children must fight. INDEX Abolitionism, effectiveness of, due to its harmonizing with the American economic trend, 73 n. Absolute socialism, theory of as pro- pounded by Marx and Engels, 171- 173 ; the religious quality in, 173 ; upsetting of the theory, 174-177; non-consummation of the class-war doctrine of, 177-178; attempted adjustment of old absolute theories to modern broad democratic im- pulses, 182-183. Adams, John, supporter of the "gentle- man's" form of government, 10, 16. Advertising, effect of, in limiting freedom of expression in newspapers, 122- 124. Agricultural wealth of United States, 205 ; statistics of increase in (1850- 1900), 213, 214. Alcoholic beverages, government prohi- bition of sale of, an expression of socialization, 289-290. Alcoholism, interactions between in- sanity, child mortality, tuberculosis, etc., and, 332 n. Alien and Sedition Laws, 16. Amendment of the Constitution, 13, 14- 15, 110, 266-267, 316-318. Anarchy of consumption, the present era of, 330-332. Antagonism, the propagandist's prefer- ence for, over indifference, 272 n. Automobiles and plutocrats, 246 n. Autonomy, industrial, theory of, 281 n. ; basis of the objection of, to govern- ment regulation, 288; overturning of theory of, 289. Banking business of federal government, extension of, 284. Beef Trust, 82, 86. "Benevolent feudalism," the prophecy of a. 4. Bernstein, Edward, cited, 177 n. Birth rate, decrease in, implies an im- proved standard of living, 320; excessively high, in the nether social world, 336 ; the Malthusian theory vs. the facts as regards countries of Western Europe, 355-356. Books as an outlet for free opinion, 134. Boss, origins of the, under the Jacksonian regime, 18. Bowley, Arthur L., cited, 174 n. Breckinridge, S. P., cited, 339. Bribery in politics, 57-58, 98-99, 101- 103. See Corruption. Brook Farm, 73, 74. Bryce, James, quoted on the American plutocracy, 79; on congressional committees, 116; on public opinion in the United States, 137 ; on devel- opment of higher education in the United States, 230; on growing intelligence of the American masses, 232 n. Charity as arranged by plutocracy's code of reform, 143. Children, change in the social attitude toward, 339. Chinese, illogical and brutal wisdom of exclusion of, 347. City, rapid development of the, 34 ; pre- emption of the, by politicians and financiers, 34-35; the American city of the Centennial year, 67-68 ; facility of creation of public opinion in, 232. City-dwellers, improvement in status of American, 212-213. Civil Service, effect of reform of the, 301. Class war, theory of a, to attain a real social democracy, 169; earliest form of the theory in the Commu- nistic Manifesto of 1848, 170 ; abso- lute socialism and the, 171-173 ; theory of, untenable on the premises of Karl Marx, 173-178 ; men in America who are misled into pre- 359 360 INDEX dieting a, 178-179; question of leadership of the proletariat forces in, 180-181 ; toning down of theory of, among socialists themselves, 181- 182 ; awkward dilemma of socialist supporters of theory, between the city proletariat and the farmers, 183-184 ; extent of surrender of the doctrine shown by National Pro- gram of the Socialist party, 186 n.; the democratic socialization of American industry and life will cause less to be heard of the doctrine in future, 189. Coal supplies, danger of exhaustion of, 285. Commission government of cities, 313. "Common goods," state supply of, by way of socializing consumption, 332. "Common people," the classes of Ameri- cans composing the, 236-239. Communistic experiments as protests against reckless American indi- vidualism, 72-73. Communist Manifesto of 1848, 170; quoted on the "dangerous class," 181 n. Competition, individualism and, 45; gambling the logical conclusion of, 46 ; the end of, in the swallowing up of the small competitor, 47-^49 ; under the regime of the trust and under socialization, 281-283 ; com- petition in consumption as well as in production, 330. Competitive industries and monopolies, approximate distinction between, 282 n. Confiscation, not an accompaniment of the democratic advance, 260-261 ; the doubtful boundary line between taxation, regulation, fair payment, and, 263 n. Conflict, the element of, in social ad- vance, 261-262. Congress, originally not a popularly elected body, 14 ; need of changes in, in behalf of the democracy, 116- 117, 304, 315. Congressional committees, evils of sys- tem of, 116-117. Connecticut, property qualification for voting in early, 9. Conquest of the American continent, and effects on democracy, 23-35; the national consciousness a fruit of the, 65. Conservation of life and health, 320- 326. Conservation of natural resources, op- posed through fear of government ownership and operation, 285; to what grand social end it may be carried by the government, 286, 314. Constitution, the federal : the political wisdom of dead America, 12-13 ; how subversive of the popular interest, 13-15 ; defect of un- changeableness of, 15; reason for its satisfactory working, 16 ; Amer- ican loyalty to the ideal of the, gives the plutocracy its main hold, 107- 108 ; interpretation of, by the Supreme Court, 109 ; the inability to amend is a flat negation of de- mocracy, 110; measures of social reform which cannot be adopted because of the, 111 ; Fourteenth Amendment to, and the corpora- tions, 114-115; measures proper for democracy to take concerning, until it becomes amendable, 266- 267; fate of, under program of political democratization, depends upon its amendability, 316-318. Consumers, the democracy united on common basis of, 250-253. Consumption, statistics of, 216, 220 ; a frantic competitive, for which the plutocracy sets the pace, 246-247; socialization of, 320, 330-334. Corporations, the small investor's share in capital of, 87-88; business se- crecy and uncontrolled financial methods of, 88-89; Fourteenth Amendment invoked in behalf of, 114-115; regulation of, 276-277; increasing extent of federal control of, 290-291. Corruption, party, in the new democracy of Andrew Jackson, 18 ; use of, as a weapon by the plutocracy, 96 ff . ; existence of, since founding of the American republic, 97; change of character and source in present-day, 97-99; tacit league between city, State, and national corruption, 100- 101 ; the political party the main channel for, 104 ; remedial effect of the referendum on, 308-310. Cost of living, ratio between wage in- crease and, 221-222. Courts, question of exemption from INDEX 361 criticism, 113; complications, in- volutions, and procrastinations of, 116-116. Crime, punishment of, in early America, 11-12; treatment of, by the new democracy, 340-342. Dartmouth College Case, 114. Declaration of Independence, 2, 7, 9, 12, 17, 21, 51; a beautiful ideal, 8; political and economic philosophy of, compared with that of the "Wealth of Nations," 52-53. Delaware, qualifications for holding of- fice in, in 1776, 9. Democracy, American : disillusionment concerning, 1-4 ; does democracy pay? 4 ; birth of a new, 4-5; ques- tion of character of the new, 5-6 ; real character of the "shadow- democracy" of 1776, 7-12 ; the fed- eral Constitution and democracy, 12-16 ; progress of new spirit of, in first quarter of nineteenth century, 17-18 ; v belief in the attainment of, with the inauguration of Jackson, 18-19; the democracy of 1829 an advance on that of contemporaneous world, 19 ; America now outdis- tanced by Europe in, and reasons, 20-22 ; effects of slavery and of the necessity of conquering the conti- nent on, 21-22 ; the springing up of the new social, as an antagonist of the plutocracy, 118-119; accom- panies the plutocracy in its invasion of politics, 119 ; wherein the concep- tion of efficiency held by the new democracy differs from that of the plutocracy, 149-150; arguments of the plutocracy against the new democracy, 153-154 ; a full, free, socialized democracy rendered inevi- table by the plutocratic program, 155; evolution of this democracy traced, 158-161 ; wherein the new social democracy differs from the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian indi- vidualistic democracy, 161-162 ; the social democracy a revolutionary movement by its very nature, 165- 167; reactions inevitably excited, 167 ; theory of attainment of a social democracy by a war between classes, 169 ff . ; leaders of the social de- mocracy not to spring from the most indigent classes, as illustrated by the Negro and recent immigrants, 180; and the class war, 189-190; rendered ultimately inevitable by the creation of a social surplus, 194 ; three levels of democratic striving necessary to maintain in order to secure, 207 ; the various forces con- stituting the, 235 ff. ; composed in the final summing up of a residue of population after the very rich and the abjectly poor have been drawn off, 237-238 ; question of ability of these forces to unite, 239-240; elements of solidarity found in antagonism to the plutocracy and a common interest in the social sur- plus, 244; analysis of antagonism of, to the plutocracy, 244-249; basis of common hostility to plutoc- racy supplemented by the common aim of a desire to share in the social surplus, 249-250; with elements of solidarity in the way of common antagonism to plutocracy and desire to share in the social surplus, by minor adjustments permanent unity of democratic forces will be attained, 253 ; primary factors determining tactics of, 255; influence of tradi- tion on experiments of, 255; of growing social surplus, 255-256 ; of wide diversity in democratic forces, 256 ; resort to violence un- likely, in the tactics of the democ- racy, 256-259 ; confiscation of plutocratic property unlikely, 260- 261 ; extent to which the evolution of democracy is a social conflict, 261-263 ; internal adjustment of, a process of uniting diversified groups, 263; while not favoring confisca- tion, does attack swollen fortunes, monopolies, special privileges, busi- ness secrecy, etc., 263-264; the goal of democracy a maximum of control with a minimum of regula- tion, 264; successive steps toward, in control of natural resources, be- ginning of taxation of inheritances, etc., 266; measures to be taken to secure political control, 266-267; consistent and constructive policy needed by, 268-270; necessity of harmony among its groups, 270- 271 ; inertness and indifference to 362 INDEX be overcome by, 271-272; cam- paign of education necessary, 273 ; socialization of industry aimed at, through government ownership, gov- ernment regulation, tax reform, etc., 276 ff . ; promotion of industrial democracy by the trade-union, 292- 293 ; political program of the, 298 ff. ; chief aim of program, as shown by direct nominations, the recall, the initiative, and the refer- endum, is direct appeal to the majority, 310; social program of the, 320 ff . ; conservation of life and health by the, 320-326; pro- gressively diffused education neces- sary to maintenance of the, 326- 330 ; solution of the problem of the submerged, 335-342 ; the problem of the Negro, 342-346; the immi- gration question, 346-347; the movement toward the new democ- racy is a result of the efforts of the general community, 348-349 ; ques- tion of permanency of, 349 ff . ; fear and dread of the, and reasons, 350-351 ; supposed incompatibility of, with progress, 351-353 ; fear of destruction of human liberty under, 353-354; the argument that it is "too good to be true," 354-355; the overpopulation threat, 355-356 ; the menace of depopulation, 356- 357. Democratic striving, three levels of, 207- 208; the economic level, 209-223; the intellectual level, 223-233; the political level, 233-234. Democratization, of political parties and primaries, 297-301 ; of elections, 301 ff.j of education, 320, 326- 330. Department stores as illustrating stand- ardization, 82 n., 143. Depopulation, supposed menace of, in a socialized democracy, 356-357. Devine, Edward T., quoted on the new penology, 340-341. Direct primaries, 298, 299, 300, 304. Disillusionment in regard to American democracy, 1-4. Distribution of wealth, inequalities in, an argument against the efficiency argument of the plutocracy, 144- 146. Dwight, Timothy, quoted on nineteenth century individualists, 72. Economic level of democratic striving, 209-223. Education, believed in by the plutoc- racy, 143 ; element of, in demo- cratic striving, 223; the American instinct for, 224-225; a diffused, a necessity to democracy, 225; wealth means, 226; figures of illiteracy and literacy, 227 ; tre- mendous difficulties encountered by American, 229 ; statistics of present- day, 230; influence of libraries in, 231 ; campaign of, necessary for the democratic advance, 273 ; the democratization of, 320, 326 ff . ; indispensability of, to the mainte- nance of a socialized democracy, 326-328; advocacy of free, from kindergarten to university, 328; imperative need of improvement in methods of, 329-330; necessary to a high national efficiency in a democracy, 328-330; influence of, upon national consumption will be increasingly felt, 332-333 ; preven- tion of crime by promoting, 342 ; desire for, due to social capillarity, would continue under a socialized democracy, 352. Educational reform in the Jacksonian epoch, 18. Efficiency, argument of, in behalf of the plutocracy, 139 ff . ; confuting of argument of, by self-evident in- equalities in distribution of wealth, 144-146; the conception held by the new democracy, 149-150 ; com- parison of governmental and pri- vate business efficiency, 312-313 ; a widely diffused education necessary to the highest national, 328-330. Elections, democratization of, 300-310. Engels, Friedrich, 171, 172 n., 181 n. England, per capita wealth of, 201 n. Equality, social, the exception in early America, 10-11. Equality of opportunity, democratic policies of conservation, education, and socialization of consumption tending toward, 320-334. Europe, poverty of countries of, com- pared with America, 201-202; status of workmen in, compared with that of American workmen, 215-216 ; government ownership INDEX 363 in, 283 ; lowering of birth rate in, 355-356. Exploitation, evolution of doctrine of, out of growing disproportion be- tween social surplus and social misery, 200. Factory labor, evil effects of, 70-71. Factory laws, improvement and exten- sion of, 325-326. Farmer, improvement in status of the, 176-177, 211-212; statistics of increase in value of farm property, 213-214 ; the great farm vs. the small farm, 214. Feudalism, comparison of the era of plutocracy and, 140 n. Force, resort to, not among the weapons of the democracy, 256-259. Forest Service figures, 285 n. Fourteenth Amendment to Constitution, protection of corporations by the, 114-115. Gambling, the outcome of the American spirit of individualism, 46-47; end of gambling, or competition, is the swallowing up of the small gambler, 47-49. Gide, Charles, cited, 175 n. Goodnow, Frank J., "Social Reform and the Constitution" by, quoted, 111— 112. Government, the American: kept in sub- jection by the exponents of Ameri- can democracy, 52-54 ; once created was left to itself, 54; its spirit of eternal compromise, 54 ; ends by offering itself for exploitation to the two dominating political parties, 55 ; character of, furnishes suitable conditions for growth of political parties, 55-56 ; system of, now in favor of the plutocracy, 117; the new democracy's program relative to amending and improving the, 298- 319. Government ownership and regulation of industry, the aim of the new democracy, 276-277; as urged in party platforms, 278-279; back- wardness of America in, compared with Europe, 283; three factors leading to an extension of, 283; question of extent of, 284-285; possibility of ending in competition with private business, 286 ; in some instances private ownership sub- ject to public control more desirable than, 287 ; wherein the trust has the advantage over, 287-288 ; illus- trations of cases of government regulation, 289-290; steady ad- vance in, 290; regulation of rail- roads, 290-291 ; vast scope of and benefits accruing from, 291-292; possibility of regulation of wages and prices, 293 n. Graft, 57-58; not a new thing in America, 97. See Corruption. Grant, President, corruption under, 97. Hadley, Arthur T., quoted, 114-115. Hamilton, Alexander, 13, 16. Hartford Convention, 17. Health, government conservation of, 320-326. Hours of labor, the need for shorter, 150, 333-334 ; for women, 340. House of Representatives, national, 14 ; arrangements in, which thwart the will of the people and help the plu- tocracy, 116-117; reform of legisla- tive methods in, 315. House ownership, decrease in individual, and deductions therefrom, 220-221. Housing conditions, improvement in, 212-213. Icaria, communistic experiment at, 73. Illiteracy, statistics of, in America, 227. Immigrants, leaders of the democracy not to originate among the recent, 180. Immigration, effect of, on conquest of American continent, 29 ; statistics of, 29 n. ; the national conscious- ness in part a result of, 65 ; effect of unrestricted, on the native laborer's condition, 68-69 ; an aid to the trust against its employees, 91 ; advisability of further restriction of, 346-347. Imprisonment for debt in early America, 11-12, 17. Income taxation, 266, 296, 314. 364 INDEX Indentured servants in our original democracy, 9. Indifference, the negative force of, in the democratic movement as in woman's suffrage, 271-272 ; antagonism pref- erable to, 272 n. Individualism : the keynote of the de- mocracy of 1829, 20-21 ; the subjuga- tion of, by the financier and the trust, 33-35; causes of the distinc- tive American quality, 36 ; origins of, in Massachusetts and the North, 36-37; opening of a new era for, with opening of the back country, 37-38 ; the pioneer the most repre- sentative type of, 38-39 ; the spirit of, in the factory builder, town boomer, promoter, trust manipula- tor, etc., 39 ; tokens of, shown in a certain American magnificence, 40- 41 ; another side shown in our illimi- table optimism, 41-42 ; having as a corollary the quality of tolerance, 42; highest expression of, found in private business and the quest of money, 43-44; riotous career of, applied to business, 44; logical conclusion of, in the rebate, 45; sequence of an untrammeled, found in an unprincipled code of business morals, 45 ; competition and, 45 ; still exists in the monopolist, 48; and in the little dealer also, but in subdued form, 49-50; how the American government was planned to strengthen, 52-54; the connec- tion between the slum and, 71-72; early protests against the wanton spirit of, 72 ; moral, religious, and communistic movements directed against, 72-73 ; monopoly age suc- ceeds the era of, 74 ; the new plutoc- racy the representative of the old individualism, 74 ; in the social pro- gram of the plutocracy, 146-148; the insensible passing from, to a new social ideal, 160-161 ; distribu- tion of taxes from the viewpoint of, 162-163 ; approach of, toward the- ory of a democratic socialization of industry and of life, 189. Industrial autonomy, 281 n., 288, 289. Industrial program of the democracy, 276 ff. Industries, socialization of. See Social- ization of industries. Industry, government regulation of, 276- 277, 278-279, 283, 284-285, 286- 288 ; vast scope of possible govern- ment regulation of, 291-292; the trade-union an agency of the de- mocracy's program for, 292. Inheritance taxation, 266, 296, 314. Initiative, the, 306-310; a constitu- tional, recommended, 318. Insurance by the government of citizens' life and health, 323-324. Insurgency, Congressional, merely a symptom, 5. Intellectual level of democratic striving, 223-233. Interstate Commerce Commission, ac- tivities of, 290-291. Investment, the modern revolution in, 87-88. Jackson, Andrew, regime of, 18. Jefferson, Thomas, 15 n. ; election to presidency, 17 ; philosophy of Adam Smith compared with that of, 52. Juvenile courts as a symptom of prog- ress, 338-339. Keith, B. F., quoted, 219 n. Kings, metempsychosis of, 265 n. Kuczynski, R. R., cited, 174 n. Large-scale production, one source of vast fortunes found in, 82 ; perma- nence and steady advance of, 84- 85 ; the regulation of, as to owner- ship, stock issues, prices, wages, etc., a present necessity, 94 ; in the industrial program of the democ- racy, 281 ff. Leisure, America poverty of, 333-334. Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, cited, 177 n. Levasseur, Emile, cited, 174 n. Levels of democratic striving below which the masses must not fall, 207- 208, 209 ff. Liberty, fears for, under a socialized democracy, 353-354. Libraries, development of, and effects, 231. Life, government conservation of, 320- 326. Life insurance figures, deductions from, 220. INDEX 365 Liquor traffic, control of, an illustration of difficulty of socializing con- sumption, 331 n. Livestock, wealth of United States in, 204. Louisiana, cession of, and effect on American life, 26-27. M Machinery, conquest of world by, 32. McMaster, J. B., cited, 9 ; quoted, 10. Magazines, the status of, in plutocratic America, 133-134; furnish one proof of the rise and diffusion of wealth, 224; figures of growth of, 231 n. Magnificence, quality of, as showing American individualism, 40-41. Malthusian theory, 355-356. Marshall, John, 16. Marx, Karl, 171, 181 n. ; the absolute socialism of, 171-178. Maryland, the suffrage in early, 9. Massachusetts, property qualification for voting in early, 9 ; influence of early settlers in, on the nation's destinies, 36-37. " Mere physical efficiency," line of, 210. Merriam, C. Edward, quoted, 299. Mexico an example of a democracy on paper, 12 n. Millionaires, origins of, 79 ff. See Plu- tocracy. Milwaukee, socialists of, 258. Mineral wealth of United States, 204 ; what national control of, would mean to the democracy, 266. Money, omnipotence of, in America, 43- 44. Monopoly, age of, succeeds to era of individualism, 64, 74 ; a chief source of American fortunes, 82- 83 ; permanence and steady in- crease of, 84-85 ; state intervention in, according to program of democ- racy, 282-283 ; choice lies between government monopolies and private, instead of between government monopolies and competition, 283. Monopoly values as illustrated by rail- road rights of way into cities, 268- 269. Mormons, the, 30 ; religion of, at vari- ance ^ith American individualism, 73. Municipal ownership, 285 n. N Negro, an illustration of the point that leaders of democracy are not to spring from the most indigent, 180 ; democracy's problem in the, 342- 346. Negro suffrage, question of, 302-303. Nether world, problem for democracy to face in the, 335-342. New England, evolution of the national spirit from, 37. New Hampshire, early limitations on suffrage in, 9. New Jersey, property qualification for voting in early, 9. Newspapers, the plutocracy and, 121- 125 ; responsibility of the public for many bad qualities of, 127-128; one reason for so-called deteriora- tion of, in the literacy of the unedu- cated, 227 n. ; stupendous growth of, 231. New York, property qualification for voting in early, 9. Neymarck, Alfred, cited, 177 n. North Carolina, suffrage in early, 9. Ochlocracy, the fear of an, 350. Oklahoma, opening of, for settlement, 31. Opportunity, democratic policies tend- ing toward equality of, 320-334. Optimism as a sign of our American individualism, 41-42. Overpopulation, the threat of, in a socialized democracy, 355-356. Panama Canal, significance of nation's ability to pay for, 206; construc- tion of, is an illustration of an effi- ciently conducted public undertak- ing, 312. Parasitic trades, reform of, 325-326. Parcels post, the, 284. Party. See Political parties. Party platforms, democracy's industrial program outlined in, 277-278. Patten, Simon N., tribute to, 191 n. Penology, the new, 340-342. Per capita wealth of United Kingdom and of United States, 201 n. Pinchot, Gifford, quoted, 285. 366 INDEX Plutocracy, the typical class in the age of monopoly, 74 ; viewed as the price America is paying for the necessary reorganization of her affairs, 76-77; analysis and origins of the undeniably existent American plutocracy, 78-84; character of men who compose, 90-91 ; in the summing-up is based on the sup- port of small investors and the masses, 93 ; maintains itself because as a nation we do not know what to do, 93-94; the weight of, thrown against measures of regulation of large-scale productive agencies, 95; corruption the natural weapon of the, 96; present political solidarity of the interests which compose the, 106 ; adherence and loyalty of the people to the federal Constitution the strongest support of the, 107- 108 ; the Supreme Court as a pillar of the, 108-113; congressional aids of the, 116-117; the whole govern- mental system in favor of the, 117; general effect on legislators and parties of the plutocracy in politics, 117-118; final appeal of the, must be to the moral judgment of the people, 119-120; control of news columns and editorial pages of news- papers by, 121-124; circumscrip- tion of influence of, on the press by the readers of newspapers, 128-131 ; the magazines and the, 133-134 ; must in the end rest its case on the truth, 137-138; defense of the, on ground of efficiency, 139 ff . ; in- equalities in distribution of wealth an answer to the efficiency argument of, 144-146 ; the taint in the social program of the, of estimating results according to profits, 147- 148; viewed as merely the cleaner of our house industrial, political, and socio-psychological, 149 ; lack of understanding on part of, of true modern social conditions, 152; replies of, to socialism and the new democracy, 153-154 ; penniless plutocrats, dream-millionaires, who back up the, 154 ; the program of, is making a democratic revolt inevitable, 155; question of the permanence of the, 156-157; not as yet a unit, 242 ; grounds of lack of solidarity, 242-243; analysis of the democracy's antagonism to, 244-249 ; frantic competitive con- sumption for which pace is set by the, 246-247; some wild threats of the, to advancing democracy, 265 ; possible use of race hatred by, 344. Poisons, prohibition of sale of, viewed as an expression of socialization, 289- 290. Political level of democratic striving, 233-234. Political parties, not contemplated by "the Fathers," 55; inevitability of, because of weakness of the govern- ment, 55-56 ; use and even neces- sity of, 60 ; are the main channel through which political corruption flows, 104 ; root of deterioration of, was money, 105; outlines of democracy's industrial program in platforms of, 277-278; control of, the very beginning of political democracy, 298; progress in legal regulation of, 299. Politicians, appearance of, in the Ameri- can democracy, 55-56; character of, as business men, 56-57 ; growth of power of, with growth of wealth and population, 57-58; process of strengthening and securing their position by, 60 ; undoubtedly have their place, 60 ; inability of the free American people to free itself from, 62-63. Politics, nation-wide spread of corrup- tion in, 99-100 ; trust methods applied to, by plutocracy, 106-107. Population, increase in, the demand of the despot rather than the demo- crat, 320-321 ; effect of a socialized democracy on rate of growth of, 355-357. Post office statistics, 232. Poverty, of earlier social world con- trasted with wealth of modern, 191- 193 ; the overpopulation theory of explanation of, 194; the disequi- librium between present-day, and social surplus, 197-200; of Euro- pean countries compared with Amer- ica, 201-202 ; changes in character of American, 221 n. ; sickness and death due to, 321, 325. Poverty line, the, 209-210. President, election of, originally removed from the people, 14. INDEX 367 Press, the plutocracy and the, 121 ff. ; influence of plutocracy over, through business reasons, 122-124 ; the general tone of, influenced by the plutocracy, 125; responsibility of the public for many bad qualities of the, 127-128, 231 n. Prices, government regulation of, 293 n. Profits, negation of, not implied by de- mocracy's industrial program, 280. Proletariat, Engels' definition of the, 172 n. Pseudo-trusts, 85 n. Publicity, desirability of, in business, 294. Public opinion, the plutocracy and, 121 ff . ; plutocracy's control of, by no means complete, 135-136 ; breadth and general coherence of, in the United States, 136-137; seeks to become the ruling power, 137; opportunity for creation of, in cities, 232. Public service enterprises in American cities, 285 n. Punishments for crime in early America, 11-12. Q Qualifications for voting and for office- holding in the American democracy of 1776, 9-10. R Race problem, danger residing in failure to grapple and solve, 344-345. Railroad passes, effect of prohibition of, on corruption, 301. Railroads, effect on America of advent of, 28; unification of the nation and its territory by, 31 ; combina- tion of, and capital, 84-85 ; sta- tistics concerning, 205 ; value of monopoly privileges illustrated by, 268-269 ; progress in government regulation of, 276, 290-291. Rebate, the, viewed as the individualistic spirit carried to its logical conclu- sion, 45-46. Recall, the, 305-306. Redemptioners in original democracy, 9. Referendum, the, 306-310; a constitu- tional, 318. Reforming* movements in America, 72- 73. Reorganization, the plutocratic, 74-77. Representation, proportional, within the States, 316. Restrictions on suffrage and office-hold- ing in early America, 9-10. Rowntree, B. Seebohm, quoted regarding the "mere physical efficiency" line, 210. Savings bank deposits, significance of increase in (since 1858), 219-220. Schmoller, Gustav, cited, 175 n. Schools, figures concerning American, 229-230 ; need of improved methods in, 329. See Education. Secrecy an element in corporation methods, 87-90 ; arguments pro and con, 294. Semidemocrats, utilization of, by the democracy, 263. Senate, national, 14. Senators, direct election of, 304. Shafroth, John F., quoted, 117. Sherman Law, the, 94. Sinclair, Upton, "The Jungle" by, 178- 179. Slavery, retarding effect of, on attain- ment of true democracy, 9, 21. Slum, the American, 2, 4; coming of, and causes, 69-71 ; merely the reverse of the daring optimism which had conquered the continent, 71-72 ; democracy's problem in the, 335-342. Smith, Adam, economic philosophy of, enunciated in the "Wealth of Nations," 52 ; quoted on taxation from the individualistic point of view, 162. Smith, J. Allen, quoted on congressional committees, 116. Social democracy, birth and evolution of the new, 158-161 ; the difference between the Jeffersonian and Jack- sonian democracy and, 161-162 ; a revolutionary movement per se, 165-167; inevitable reactions ex- cited, 167 ; the theory of attainment by a class war, 169 ff. ; leaders of, not to spring from the most indigent, as illustrated by the Negro and recent immigrants, 180 ; new impetus given to action of, by growth of social surplus, 199. See Democ- racy. 368 INDEX Socialism, 105; arguments of, against plutocracy, and vice versa, 153 ; "ab- solute socialism," 171-177; naive theory of disappearance of so-called "menace of socialism," and why erroneous, 189 n. Socialists, diminution of the class war theory among, 181-182 ; strength of, in Germany and in other countries, 182 ; extent of surrender of class war doctrine by, 186 n. ; adoption by, of a theory of a democratic socialization of industry and of life, 189. Socialization of industries, a part of democracy's program, 276 ff. ; dif- ferent degrees of, in different indus- tries, 279-280; minute rules and regulations not necessary for, 280 ; does not involve the negation of profits, 280; analogy between the trust and, 281 ; industrial autonomy an opposition theory, 281 n. ; ne- cessity of high industrial efficiency under, because of high cost of maintenance, 287; expression al- ready given to socialization in prohibition of sale of poisons, alcoholic beverages, of gambling, of firecrackers, etc., 289-290; just distribution of the product of industry an object of, 294-297; socialization of wealth by taxation, 295-297 (see Taxation); of the business of health-keeping, 320- 326 ; of consumption, 320, 330-334. Social reform, the plutocracy's program of, 143, 320-347. Social surplus, definition of phrase, 191 ; ignorance and poverty anachronistic in view of existence of a, 191 ff . ; creation of, by steam and machinery, in eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies, 193-194; the opportunity for a socialized democracy created by, 194, 195 ; in the beginning of era of, held by men who had to share it with the masses, 195-196; advantages of, passed on indirectly to the working classes, 196 ; effect of the accumulation of, on the inevitable democracy, 196-197 ; disequilibrium between social wealth and existing social misery, 197- 200 ; inevitableness of the success of the popular struggle for, reasoned from the success to date, 200-201 ; statistics of national wealth, 203- 205 ; relation of the three levels — economic, intellectual, and political — of democratic striving to the, 207-208; a common interest in an element of solidarity among the democracy, 244, 249-250; absorp- tion of undue share of, by unregu- lated monopolies, 282-283. Solidarity, complexity of conception of, 241-242; lack of, among the plu- tocracy, 242-243 ; chief elements of, among the democracy, 244. South Carolina, restrictions on suffrage in early, 9 ; qualifications for office- holding, 9-10. Spargo, John, quoted, 183. Spending power of the masses, 216-220. Spoils system, inauguration of, with Jackson's election, 18; political parties fortified but debauched by, 67. Standardization, of industry by the plu- tocracy, 75-77, 82-85 ; as a maker of American fortunes, 82-83 ; of plutocracy's control of politics, 97- 107 ; of plutocracy's control of the press, 126-127. Standard of living, raising of, by lower- ing birth rate, 320. Standard Oil Company, 84, 140 n. Steffens, Lincoln, quoted on political corruption, 99-100. Stocks, position of the small investor in, 88-90. Submerged, problem of the, 335-342. Suffrage, early limitations on, in different states, 9-10 ; woman and Negro, 302-303. Supreme Court, undemocratic character of, 14 ; interpretation of the Consti- tution by, 109 ; unlimited power of, 109-111; reasons for favoring pluto- cratic cause rather than the demo- cratic, 112; should not be shielded from criticism, 113; hope of the democracy in the sensitiveness of, to the popular will, 317-318- Switzerland, the recall in, 306 n. ; con- stitutional amendments in, 318. Taft, William H., quoted on criticism of courts, 113 n. Taxation : from the individualistic view- point, 162-163 ; use of, in the new INDEX 369 socialized democracy, to accomplish social ends, 163-164; socialization of wealth by, 295-297. I Tax reform as a means to the democratic end, 276, 277. 1 Telephone development, 232. I Theatrical Trust and the free expression of opinion, 134. Tobacco Trust, 86. Tocqueville, Alexis de, on the American democracy, 19-20. Tolerance as a corollary of American optimism, 42. Town-meeting, expression of the primitive democratic spirit in the, 7-8. Trade-union, improvement of labor conditions by the, 175 ; a repre- sentative and powerful agency of democracy in attaining its program, 292-293 ; problems and possibilities of the, in relation to men incapable of earning union wages, 337 ; must always be open at the bottom, 338. Tradition, influence of, in democratic experiments, 255. Transportation, statistics of, 205. Trust, advent of the, 32-33 ; typical of a new period in America, 64; the typical expression of the plutocratic reorganization following the era of individualism, 75 ; characteristic features of the, 75-76 ; was a neces- sity for the reorganization of Ameri- can affairs, 76 ; at the same time a misfortune, 76-77 ; certain indus- tries not susceptible to the trust pro- cess, 83 ; increase in growth and number of trusts, 84-85 ; acts as a unit against unorganized masses, 85-86 ; power over consumers and employees, 86; treatment of sur- viving competitors, 86-87 ; rule of the magnate over the, 87 ; uncon- trolled business methods of the, and position of small investor in, 87- 90; aids of the, in our protective tariff, our internal free trade, un- restricted immigration, and our increasing national wealth, 91 ; impossibility of setting limits to future development of trusts, 91- 92 ; the question of what to do about the, 93-95 ; methods of the, applied by the plutocracy to politics, 106-107; comparison drawn be- tween the feudal despotism and the, 140 n. ; analogy between socializa- 2b tion and the, 281; desirability of government chaperonage of, 286 n. ; advantages and disadvantages of, in comparison with government ownership, 287-288. U Unearned increment from property invested with a public interest, reversion of, to the government, 295. Union Pacific Railroad, 31, 64. United Cigar Stores Company, 86, 248. United States, per capita wealth in, 201 n. ; statistics of present wealth of, 203-205. United States Steel Corporation, 84, 92. Universities, though trust-endowed, may teach democracy, 135. Utopias, difference between ideal, and the new democracy, 354-355. Vaudeville artists' salaries, 219 n. Violence, undesirability and unlikelihood of, in the tactics of the democracy, 256-259 ; previous resorts to, in Colorado and elsewhere, 259 n. Virginia, voting in early, 9. W Wages, the steady rise in, 174-175 ; comparison of American and Euro- pean, 215 ; ratio of increase in, to increase in cost of living, 221-222; adjustment of, to prices helps to bring forces of democracy into unity, 250-253 ; regulation of, by government, 293 n. Waste, avoidance of, as an argument for the plutocracy, 142, 143. See Effi- ciency. Wealth, inequalities in distribution of, 144-146; democracy's hope based upon the steady increase in, 191 ; sketch of changes which have oc- curred in the world's wealth, 191- 198 ; of America as compared with European countries, 201-202 ; sta- tistics of, of our country, 203-205 ; advance of the average citizen in, 210-215 ; diffusion of, as shown by statistics of consumption of goods, 216-220; education implied by, 226. See also Social surplus. 370 INDEX Woman's suffrage movement, indiffer- ence the chief enemy of, 272; extent of, 302. Women employed, statistics of, at home and abroad, 216 n. ; regulation of hours of labor for, 340. Women's Trade Union League, 340. Working classes, improvement in condi- tion of, since 1848, 174-176; com- parison as to economic status of American and European, 215-216; increase in wages compared with increase in cost of living, 221-222. Working day, length of, 150, 333, 340. 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