■^^iemocracy account of the facts. Out of the people it would constitute a mob, in forgetfulness of the fact that the mob, led or unled, is the most serious foe that the people have ever had to face. The Roman Republic conquered every enemy but its own vices. With this warning written large across the page of history, what is the lesson of Rome for America "^ We come back to the conception which Mazzini had of democracy : " The progress of all through all, under the leadership of the best and wisest." True democracy will carry on an insistent search for these wisest and best, and will elevate them to posts of leadership and command. Under the operation of the law of liberty, it will provide itself with real leaders, not limited by rank, or birth, or wealth, or circumstance, but opening the way for each individual to rise to the place of honor and influence by the expression of his own best and highest self. It will exactly reverse the com- munistic formula, "From each according to his [13] True and abilities, To each according to his needs," and False will uphold the principle, "From each according Democracy ^^ j^jg needs, To each according to his abilities." ~- It will take care to provide such a ladder of edu- cation and opportunity that the humblest may rise to the very top if he is capable and worthy. The most precious thing fn the world is the individual human mind and soul, with its capacity for growth and service. To bind it fast to a formula, to hold it in check to serve the selfish ends of mediocrity, to deny it utterance and expression, political, economic, and moral, is to make democracy im- possible as a permanent social and governmental form. Need of The United States is in sore need to-day of an tocraTy^" aristocracy of intellect and service. Because such an aristocracy does not exist in the popular con- sciousness, we are bending the knee in worship to the golden calf of money. The form of mon- archy and its pomp offer a valuable foil to the wor- ship of money for its own sake. A democracy must pro\4de itself with a foil of its own, and none is better or more effective than an aristocracy of intellect and service recruited from every part of [141 our democratic life. We must put behind us the True and fundamental fallacy that equaUty is demanded by False justice. The contrary is the case. Justice de- Democracy mands inequality as a condition of liberty and as a means of rewarding each according to his merits and deserts. Even the Socialist admits this, for Menger has written that " the wealth destined for the immediate satisfaction of desires may, even in the socialist state, be divided unequally, accord- ing to the quality and quantity of work performed, the rank occupied by each in the state, and many other factors." Jealousy of power honestly gained and justly exercised, envy of attainment or of possession, are characteristics of the mob, not of the people; of a democracy which is false, not of a democracy True versus which is true. False democracy shouts, Jbvery f^ise man down to the level of the average. True democracy democracy cries. All men up to the height of their fullest capacity for service and achievement. The two ideals are everlastingly at war. The future of this nation, as the future of the world, is bound up with the hope of a true democracy that builds itself on liberty. [15] True and True democracy rejects the doctrine that medi- ralse ocrity is a safeguard for Uberty, and points to the uemocracy ^^^^ ^.j^^^. ^^^^ only serious menace to Uberty conies from the predominance of monopoly, of privilege, and of majorities. True democracy holds fast to the notion that fixed standards of right and wrong are necessary to its sucdess, and that no resting-place is to be found in the verdict of authorities, of majorities, or of custom. It believes that nothing is settled until it is settled right, and that no fear of majorities and no threats of the powerful should for an instant be allowed to check the agitation to right a wrong or to remedy an abuse. True democracy sings, with Lowell, its own true poet : — " Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profitj-and 't is pros- perous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied." True democracy creates leadership by its con- [IG] fidence and trust, and follows it. False democ- True and. TSicy decries leaders and exalts demagogues. raise A real representative of the people is not their Democracy unreflecting mouthpiece or their truckling servant, altering his course to meet each shifting breeze of opinion or puff of passion. He is rather the spokesman for their conscience, their insight, and their judgment as his own deepest and sincerest convictions reveal them to him. Edmund Burke, speaking to the electors of Bristol, expressed per- fectly the real duty of a representative to his The real TT • 1 representative constituency. He said : — "It ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him ; their opinions high respect; their business unremitted attention. . . . But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure — no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, [171 True and for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. False Your representative owes you not his industry Uemocracy only, but his judgment ; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. . . . Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as aii agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates ; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole — where not local pur- poses, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, in- deed ; but when he is chosen, he is not a member of Bristol, but a member of Parliament." What Burke says of Parliament is equally true of the x\merican Congress and of Anierican State Legislatures. Their one proper concern is the interest of the whole body politic, and the true democratic representative is not the cringing, fawning tool of the caucus or of the mob, but he who, rising to the full stature of political manhood, does not take orders but offers guidance. We Americans well know that genuine leadership is ■ [18] possible in a democratic state, and that an aris- True and tocracy of intelligence and service may be built t alse up in a democracy; for the immortal example is ^^ocracy found in the life and work and glory of Abraham Lincoln. If, however, the matter were to be left here, some perplexing questions would remain un- answered. For one hundred years and more the people of the United States have maintained a democratic form of government, which has grown from small and simple beginnings to a complicated is democracy organism ruling a territory comparable to that of the world's greatest empires. Yet happiness and prosperity have not become universal, nor is justice yet established invariably as between man and man, or as between the individual and the community. For this there are two reasons. The first is to be found in human nature itself, with its limitations, its imperfections, its seemingly slow progress toward the highest ethical standards and the surest spiritual insights. For the removal of these obstacles there is no hope in man-made [19] True and formulas or in governmental policies ; education False and moral regeneration, taking long periods Democracy ^^ time to accomplish their aims, are the only instrumentalities to which we can hopefully turn. , I The second reason, however, lies somewhat ' closer at hand. It is to be found, I conceive, in the lack of adjustment between the responsibility and oversight of the community, acting through its governmental agents, and the exercise of indi- vidual initiative in matters relating to property and production. This lack of adjustment is traceable in turn to the rapid changes which the past generation or two have brought about in our economic and industrial life. To keep pace with these changes, and to secure justice without sacri- ficing liberty, is now the purpose and the hope of true democracy everywhere. What chiefly attracts attention at the moment as an element of serious injustice, is the institution, under the guise of liberty or freedom, of what is really a form of economic dependence or slavery, which is usually described as the exploitation of man by man. If this exploitation, or use and [20] Political and economic exploitation / oppression of one man by another, were shown to True and be a necessary and inevitable result of society as False now ordered and established, then might we well Democracy believe that the socialist propaganda, if it could make clear that socialism would bring such ex- ploitation to an end, would go forward with in- creasing energy and success. But it must be pointed out that the exploitation of one individual by another is not a necessary, but an incidental, consequence of the existing social order, and that, bad as it is, its results are in no sense comparable with the evils of the exploitation of one by all, which is a necessary consequence of the establish- ment of a socialistic democracy. For the exploi- tation of one by all puts an end to liberty. We should not gain anything by substituting the more injurious form of exploitation for the less injurious ; we should, rather, lose much. The real problem of democracy is to prevent both forms of exploita- tion, either that of one man by another or that of one man by the community. To prevent this exploitation, or rather to reduce it to the narrow and necessary limits set by nature itself, and to take away from it all causes added by the grant of [21] True and monopoly and privilege, are clear duties of present- False day democracy. How shall democracy proceed Democracy to this task? If the exaggerated forms of exploitation which are now observed among us are studied with care, it will be seen that, almost without exception, they spring from community-given monopoly or privi- lege. They do not spring from the relation be- tween individual and individual, or from the in- stitution of private property itself. They spring from the relation between individual and com- munity. Those relations would be multiplied, not diminished, in a socialistic democracy. The only hope for the abolition of exploitation in a socialistic democracy, therefore, is the regeneration of man and the removal of those natural obstacles to human perfection which are so plainly in evi- dence. In other words, the socialistic democ- racy assumes, and must assume for the success of its programme, a condition of individual perfection which the whole of history denies. The lack of this individual perfection gives rise to the evils of the present hour, and it would con- tinue to give rise to the same evils, but in an [22] / exaggerated form, if the socialistic democracy were True and to be established. False If what is properly called exploitation is to be ^^^^^ocraaj prevented, tliis can only be accomplished, I con- ceive, by developing with clearness and precision ^ definition a concept of public property which shall have an °^ Public property ethical foundation and a legal as well as a social needed sanction. The ethical foundation for the concept of private property, and the legal and social sanc- tions for it, are perfectly clear and well known. The concept of public property is not in so for- tunate a condition. It needs elaboration and definition. If we can arrive at this elaboration and definition of the concept of public property, then we may safely assign control of public prop- erty to the government and exclude the individual from any share in that control. On the border- land between public and private property there will be found many instances of doubtful classifi- cation. Expediency and experience will indicate on which side of the line a given case should fall. But there may wisely be established an interme- diate class of undertakings, not to be regarded as wholly private and not to be regarded as wholly [23] True and public, in respect to which individual initiative False shall prevail under such terms as the state regu- Uemocracy j^tion and oversight may prescribe. Along these lines and on this basis a true democracy can bring so-called exploitation to an end without endeavor- ing to establish a false equality, and holding fast meanwhile to true liberty. This is a practicable and a practical programme to be set over against the impracticable and unpractical programme offered by the socialist propaganda. The mob In working out this prgramme we must take versus the people <^^re to protect ourselves against the mob — a mass of men whose powers of reflection and judg- ment are unhorsed and who are driven by the force of blind passion ; for any social or political reconstruction whets the mob's appetite and stirs its passions. / In his extraordinary characterization of the con- ditions preceding and accompanying the French Revolution, Taine pictured with skilful verisimili- tude the characteristics of the mob which parades in the garb of democracy. He spoke of its mis- trust of its natural leaders, of the great, of the wealthy, of persons in office and clothed with [24] authority, as being inveterate and incurable. He True and described the sovereignty of unrestrained passions, False which is the final and bloody end of mob rule. Democracy There are those among us who understand the mob so well that they sedulously and skilfully endeavor to bring to pass just such a state of affairs as Taine described. These wreckers of society, unrestrained by principle and unham- pered by conviction, are playing wdth the fire of human passion and mob violence. They attack a conception of democracy which is true, in its every aspect, in the hope that they may enthrone in its stead a democracy which is false and futile. They begin by playing upon the term "labor." Taking note of the fact that the world's workers constitute all but an insignificant remnant of the world's citizenship, they would set one form of labor against another, and confuse and confound the meaning of the term "labor" itself. All the world over, these mischief-makers, when they put forth an academic theory, use the term "labor" in a way to include every form of productive activity. For that purpose the inventor, the overseer, the manager, the guide, and inspirer [25] True and of an undertaking, is a laborer; but when from False the height of academic theory they come down to Democracy ^^^ plane of popular agitation, then they make - the term "labor" apply to manual labor alone. It is true that leading economic writers themselves are responsible for the widespread confusion between these two uses of the term " labor." As a matter of fact, ordinary manual labor is just the opposite of what the socialist supposes it to be. Instead of being the sole instrument in the pro- duction of wealth, as the modern world knows wealth, it is a subordinate element in that pro- duction. Manual labor is always essential, to be sure, but manual labor alone does not now produce, nor has it ever produced, much more than a mere minimum of subsistence. All of the increment in production which has made the modern world possible, is due to the directing faculty, to the capacity to organize, to manage, and to apply. These powers and capacities operate both through labor and through capital. Therefore, to attempt to substitute the mob for the people, manual labor for labor in all its forms, and economic equality for hberty, is to destroy [26] all those institutions and accomplishments upon True and which man's progress has rested for three thou- t alse sand years, and which man's progress during that ^^f^^ocracy period has developed and applied in so astound- ing a fashion. Sainte-Beuve once divided authors into two The problem of wealth two classes — ceux qui agitent le monde et ceux qui le civilisent. So we may divide statesmen and leaders of public opinion into those who disturb the world and those who advance its civilization. The touchstone will be their attitude toward wealth. It is wealth — accumulated possessions of value in excess of immediate needs — that makes leisure possible, and with leisure comes genuine human living, civilization. The world wants more wealth, not less. To aim to destroy wealth, to make its accumulation impossible or personally disadvantageous, is to disturb and dis- tress the world, and, ultimately, every one in it. To seek to promote wealth, to secure its just dis- tribution and its proper use, is to advance the world's civilization. It is not money, much less wealth, which is the root of all evil, but the love of money. The cruel lust for gain, which stifles [27] True and every generous instinct and all desire for justice, False is the despicable thing, and that is a purely per- Uemocracy ^q^q\ characteristic which no law can reach. _ Nothing but a sense of honor and decency, an appreciation of true values, and a genuinely moral view of life, will cure that distressing and painfully contagious disease. To hurl at a moral and intellectual dehnquency such as this, the de- nunciations and restrictions of the law, or to in- veigh against wealth as such, is only to invite such a scathing rebuke as Professor Chfford's invective against Christianity called out from Matthew Arnold when he wrote : — "These are merely the crackling fireworks of youthful paradox. One reads it all, half smiHng, half sighing, as the declamation of a clever and confident youth, with the hopeless inexperience, irredeemable by any cleverness, of his age. Only when one is young and headstrong can one thus prefer bravado to experience, can one stand by the Sea of Time, and, instead of listening to the solemn and rhythmical beat of its waves, choose to fill the air with one's own whoopings to start the echo." ^ ^ Introduction to God and the Bible. [28] Doubtless the mob will prefer cheering its own True and whoopings to listening to the solemn and rhyth- False mical beat of the waves of the Sea of Time, but F)emocracy we must set our face against the mob, now and always, whether it wears the clothes of fashion or the workman's blouse, and whether it is vicious and violent or merely addle-pated and sullen. The surest antidote to the mob and its violence Effective and passion is to secure, in orderly and legal form, of p'ubiic'^ after due consideration and discussion, the prompt opi^^ion and effective execution of the people's will and to give voice to the people's judgments and as- pirations. This raises some interesting questions. In our own form of government there are Our three established three independent, but cooperating, agencies powers and agencies for representing the people and for executing their will — the executive, the legislative, and the judicial agency. Each im- mediately represents the people in its own way and in its own sphere, and that sphere is and should remain inviolate. Somehow or other the curious notion has been spread abroad that the legisla- tive agency, the members of which are chosen at short intervals and by small constituencies, more [29] True and fully and directly represents the people than does False either the executive or the judicial branch of Democracy ^.j^^ government. Members of the legislative _ branch of the government have themselves ac- tively spread abroad this notion both by words and by acts. It is, however, not only untrue in theory, but it is ludicrously ^falsified by the facts. As matters are to-day, and as they have been for a generation past, the Congress of the United States, the legislative branch of the national government, is far inferior to the executive and the judicial branches, as a direct and effective representative of the will and purpose of the people of the United States. It is primarily the President and the Supreme Court who speak the people's maturest mind and who express, in spoken and written word, in administrative act and in judicial decision, the highest will of the whole people. Moreover, ever since the Civil War the Congress has steadily invaded the province of the President, and has long been asserting control, directly or indirectly, over his administrative acts. At the moment, it is being urged to invade the preroga- tives of the judiciary, and to curtail and regulate [30] / the proceedings in equity of the United States True and courts — a field in which the Congress has the same False right and authority that it has in Corea or in Democracy British India, no more and no less. The language of the Constitution is perfectly plain: "The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." The judicial power as it existed at the time of the adoption of the Constitution is, therefore, beyond the power of the Congress to restrict or diminish. The Congress may establish courts inferior to the Supreme Court, but surely, when such courts are established, they are en- titled to exercise the judicial power as the framers of the Constitution knew it. This invasion of the executive and judicial Legislative usurpation powers by the legislature is often accompanied by an effort to convince the people at large that the executive power is in some subtle way antago- nistic to democracy, and, moreover, that the execu- tive is invading or has invaded the province of the legislature. This latter cry, as insincere as it is false, is invariably raised whenever it is de- [31] True and sired to distract public attention from an invasion False of the executive by the legislature, or when some Uemocracy private or privileged interest wishes to ward off from itself the execution of the people's laws. James Madison understood thoroughly well the dangers of legislative encroachment. In the Federalist,^ he wrote of the Legislative Depart- ment that "its constitutional powers, being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of pre- cise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and intricate measures, the encroachments which it makes on the coordinate departments." In the same exposition he added : " In a government where numerous and extensive pre- rogatives are placed in the hands of an hereditary monarch, the executive department is very justly regarded as the source of danger, and^atched with all the jealousy which a zeal for liberty ought to inspire. In a democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in person the legislative functions, and are continually exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and concerted measures, to ' No. 48. [32] / the ambitious intrigues of their executive magis- True and trates, tyranny may well be apprehended, on some ^ "^^^ favorable emergency, to start up in the same ^^o^''' V quarter. But in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited, both in the extent and the duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired, by a supposed in- fluence over the people, with an intrepid con- fidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enter- prising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions." As a matter of fact, if our American political experience proves anything, it proves that the executive branch of the government is the most efllcient representative and spokesman that the popular will has. So it was with Lincoln in the Civil War ; so it was with Cleveland in the struggle for a sound monetary system ; so it is with Roose- [33] True and velt in the battle against privilege and greed. False Indeed in a very real sense the popular will in the Democracy united States has no other representative, for ~- political purposes, than the President. The President of the United States is chosen by the whole people with a view to his personality, his temperament, his private convictions, and his The executive political principles. The people know who he is tive of the ^"^^ ^^1 about him. When chosen he owes no people responsibility to the Congress, but to the people of the United States alone. When he lays down his office he lays it down to the one whom the people have chosen to succeed him; but so long as he exercises its power he exercises it in the people's name and in the people's sight. On the other hand, the system, unfortunate in high degree, of small constituencies having individual representa- tives in state and national legislatures who are almost uniformly residents of the districts for which they are elected, has reduced to a mini- mum the truly representative capacity and effi- ciency of those bodies and has deprived them of many elements of power. For it is well-nigh a political axiom that large constituencies make [34] independent representatives and that small con- True and stituencies make tools and ciphers. We must not False forget how much farther a bullet will carry than a ^^'^ocracy few score of small shot. Where is it that private interest goes when it wishes to burke an expression of the popular will ? Not to the executive, not to the private cham- bers of the judges, but to the committee-rooms and to the floor of the legislative assemblies in state and nation. There responsibility is so di- vided, there secrecy is so easy, that measures de- manded by the people may be done to death, despite the urging of national and state executives. As matters stand to-day, states and syndicates have senators; districts and local interests have representatives; but the whole people of the United States have only the President to speak for them and to do their will. True democracy, therefore, while seeking by all possible means to improve the quality of its legislatures and to make them representative of principles and ideas rather than of special and local interests, will strengthen the executive arm and protect it from legislative invasion in matters [ •'55 ] True and False Democracy Confusion of govern- ment and administra- tion purely administrative. It will, through consti- tutional forms and by limitation of term, hold the executive strictly answerable for the discharge of his duty and for the bearing of his responsibility. We are constantly told by the prophets of false democracy that the efficient administration which is secured by single responsible agents is undemo- cratic. The notion of these false prophets is, I suppose, that no man can be justly convicted of crime in a democracy until each of his fellow- citizens in turn has mounted the bench and passed upon the evidence. They appear to believe that no administrative act can be truly democratic unless the people en masse assemble to institute and to approve it. This doctrine, constantly repeated by the unthinking, is both absurd in itself and the reductio ad ahsurdum of government. It not only separates decision from deliberation, but it misses the fundamental distinction between government and administration. No government is democratic which does not spring from the people's will, and which is not answerable to the people in forms and ways that the people them- selves have determined. Administration, on the [36] / other hand, is merely the transaction of the people's True and business, and a democracy is as well entitled as a False monarchy to have its business well and promptly ^^f^ocracy done. It will, therefore, if its democracy is true, adopt precisely the modes and agencies of ad- ministration that any business undertaking would adopt to secure similar aims. It is a false, spuri- ous, and misleading democracy that would destroy efficiency in working out the people's policies by insisting that all the people shall join in working them out. The people determine, the people's agent executes. When we get this distinction clearly in mind we shall cease to be troubled by many so-called reforms that are urged upon us in democracy's name. One unfortunate effect of the false conceptions Evils of of democracy that are now so widespread among . ^ us is the steady decline in reverence and respect in the United States, not only for age, attainment, and authority, but for law itself. The essence of democracy is not subordination, but association; yet the object of this association is obedience to government as the result of a common deliberation through duly constituted authorities. To those [37] 148668 True and False Democracy authorities respect is due by every real democrat. The mob yields none and will yield none. Many causes have contributed no doubt to bring about this decline in respect and reverence for authority and law. The weakening of reh- gious faith, the loosening of the bonds of parental control, the absence of real discipline from school life, have all been at work to undermine the foun- dations of respect and reverence. We shall never get back to a true democracy, however, until the majesty of the law excites reverence and respect on its own account; until the family bond is drawn closer and tighter, and until children honor their parents as they did of old ; and until the school understands that abdication of authority is not a solution for the difficulties of discipUne. Ideals of true democracy A free state built upon free labor, with liberty for its watchword and justice as its guide, is the ideal of a true democracy — that form of society, which Lowell characterized so suggestively if incom- pletely as one in which every man has a chance and knows that he has it. To the hectic, emo- tional radicalism which clamors for the exaltation [38] of the mediocre and the unfit, and upon which True and false democracy builds, true democracy will oppose False a healthy, intellectual radicalism that will seek to Democracy see life steadily and to see it whole ; a radicalism that will aim to redress old wrongs without in- flicting new ones. This radicalism of true de- mocracy — if it be radicalism — sees the end of a perfected individualism not in selfishness but in service, not in isolation but in fraternity. It has no idle dreams of Nature dethroned and Artifice exalted in her stead. It sees in the dedicated life the ideal of Liberty's best product. It dares to hope that of this twentieth century and of this fair land of ours, it will not be impossible for another Macaulay some day to write : — " Then none was for a party ; Then all were for the state ; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man helped the great : Then lands were fairly portioned ; Then spoils were fairly sold : The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old." [39] EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION AN ADDRESS delivered before the University of Michigan on Commencement Day, June 22, 1899 EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION Pericles, in his immortal panegyric upon the Education Athenian people, describes as accomplished fact ^/ ^ uolic in Athens a state of affairs which every philo- P^f^^on sophical expounder of democracy has pictured as an ideal. "An Athenian citizen," said the man whom Grote describes as having enjoyed for forty years an unparalleled moral and political ascen- dency over them, "An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in pubhc aflFairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless charac- ter; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy." * It is not inappropriate to summon cultivated men and women, peculiarly fortunate in the en- joyment of those educational advantages which '■ Thucydides, translated by Jowett, 1 : 19. [43] Education of Public Opitiion Place of public opinion in a democracy only free, enlightened, and generous common- wealths can offer, to consider some aspects of the relation in which the individual citizen stands to the development of pubHc opinion and to the con- duct of pubHc business in a democracy. The pohtical vitality and integrity of a modern state must rest, in the last instance, upon the character and clearness of the pohtical opinions held by men who are without official station. No administrative vigor and no legislative wisdom can long survive in the vacuum of pubUc ignorance and indifference. A supporting body of opinion is essential to the conduct of legislative or ad- ministrative policy, and a serious and high- principled opposition is necessary to prevent its exaggeration and abuse. The basis for this ob- servation lies in the constitution of hupian nature itself. It is amply illustrated by history. Political action on the part of a community or a state is the result of the interplay of two forces, the propelling and the resisting. Taken together and increased by the religious and the moral sentiments of the people, these political beliefs and tendencies to act constitute what is known as public opinion. [44] / It is a subtle, powerful, and sometimes terrible Education force. Like the mountain stream which ripples of Public softly in the sunlight, giving no sign of the foam- ^P^^^^ori ing and destructive torrent into which a sudden cloudburst may transform it, so public opinion, patient and long-suffering, at times seeming even dead, is capable of being roused to fury and to resolute resistance by some flagrant abuse of power or by an unprincipled violation of accepted stand- ards of action. Sir Robert Peel hardly measured its breadth and depth when with cynical insight he described public opinion as "that great com- pound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feel- ing, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs." Public opinion is not very old. It is the child Public opinion a of the art of printing, of modern education, of ^ew creation modern means of communication, of modern de- mocracy. Printing and education made it pos- sible. Steam and electricity have developed it enormously. Democracy has caused it to grow through exercise. As democratic tendencies and habits have spread, as the circle of human infor- mation and human interest has widened, as the [45] Educoiion means of communication between man and man oj Public and between man and the world about him have Upinwn expanded and multiplied, the complexity of public opinion has greatly increased ; and while the difficulty of arousing it has diminished, the diffi- culty of dire<"ting it has increased many fold. As a matter of fact^we ent^r upon the twentieth century under unprecedente-d political conditions. Most early democracies were in reaUty oligarchies. Modem theoretical democracy was quite as often oligarchical in fact. Jefferson, like Aristotle, con- templated democracy and human slavery side by side. But now the level of average intelligence and of education has been so raised, and man's power over nature has so multiplied the possibilities of political, moral, and religious s^Tiipathy and coop- eration, that for the first time in history the stage seems to be adequat-ely set for the working out of the impressive drama of democracy. The builders of the American Republic were, most of them, theo- retical democrats ; but the forces which they con- trolled and the means by which they controlled them were to an unsuspected extent oligarchical. More than one election in old New York, as so [46] often in the histor}' of England, turned wholly Education upon the alignment of a few great families. The ^f "ublic French revolutionists came to be theoretical P^^^^ democrats, but woe to the leaders of an opposing faction whose opposition took on the form of action ! To-day the situation in the United States is notably different. If men are held here in poUtical bondage, so called, it is because they put the shackles on themselves. Accurate description of their condition must always use a reflexive verb. Freedom of speech and of opinion are so well established and so uniformly acquiesced in, that pubhc declarations and acts of a kind which one day cost More his head on Tower Hill or drove Roger Williams from Massachusetts Bay, are now permitted in Boston and in Chicago without restraint, or any call to accountability, despite the fact that they may tend to cost the Uves of American soldiers and sailors sending under the flag half-way round the world. In the long run it is better so. A safety-valve is as necessary as a steam-chest. This state of affairs has come about through the slow process of social and political evolution. The [47] Education of Public Opinion Passing of class dis- tinctions Complex relationships of the individual Estates which underlay the entire legal structure of the Middle Ages and gave form to its political history, dissolved and gave way to more mobile and less definite social classes. These, in turn, have so interpenetrated each other that, in the United States at least, their significance has dis- appeared, and a single body politic, through which flow unending convection currents, has taken their place. No artificial class distinctions can long prevail in a society like ours, of which it is truly said to be often but three generations " from shirt- sleeves to shirt-sleeves." The first effect of this new condition is that, theoretically at least, individual choice displaces status as the force directing public action. The citizen now throws his influence as he wills and not as his fixed relation to his fellows dictates. He has no such fixed relation. Modern legal and social organization makes him employer and em- ployed, debtor and creditor, public servant and private citizen, all at once or in startlingly rapid succession. His individual importance is vastly increased as his points of contact with other indi- viduals or with groups multiply. He becomes less [48] and less a cog on a blindly driven wheel and more Education and more a living cell in a living body. His of Public political and social health and strength influence P^^^^ the health and strength of countless others. He cannot, if he would, cut himself off from them and live. There is no greater illusion and none more at war with the very spirit of democracy than that under whose spell public concerns are neglected and despised and one's immediate pri- vate and family interests exalted as the sole busi- ness of life. Liberty and property are social creations. Without society they could not exist. Without a well-ordered society they are not safe. Who shall order society well or ill ? The time is happily past when that question can be answered in more ways than one. But let us press the ques- tion of responsibility home: there is no abstrac- tion, no independent creation called state or government, which can order society. These are but names for one aspect or one agency of our- selves. We paraphrase the dictum of Louis XIV. and thank him for it — " The State — we are it !" Burke pointed straight at the typical bad citizen The bad citizen when he described those " who think their mnox- [49] Education of Public Opinion The individ- ual and the mass ious indolence their security." The man who submits to pubHc imposition to save trouble or trifling expense, or who pays to be "let alone," or who, priding himself upon his integrity and business success, affects to "despise politics," is contributing his mite to the degradation of govern- ment and to the tearing down of the structure so laboriously and so painfully builded by the fathers. John Hampden's ship-money was but a few paltry shillings; not to have resisted its payment might have altered the course of English history. It is only when we " place every one his private welfare and happiness in the public peace, liberty, and safety," as Milton puts it, that we exercise our privilege and perform our duty as members of society. The relation in which the individual stands to the development of public opinion is a matter which requires analysis. It is not quite so simple as appears at first sight. Theoretically, when a question is to be decided or a public attitude taken, each individual examines and weighs the evidence and the arguments for and against a given policy, and arrives at his own independent conclusion. [50] A count is then made, by ballot or otherwise, and Education the action or proposal which is approved by a ^/ Public majority of those expressing themselves is sup- ^P^^^^on ported or indorsed. Each citizen appears to have the same part to play as his neighbor, and the same influence to exercise in determining the result. As a matter of fact, however, the process is a quite different one. Bagehot has an interesting passage in which he Part played shows how large a factor unconscious imitation gcious imita- is in the making of national character. "At first *'°'^ a sort of 'chance predominance' made a model, and then invincible attraction, the necessity which rules all but the strongest men to imitate what is before their eyes, and to be what they are expected to be, moulded men by that model. This is, I think, the very process by which new national characters are being made in our time. ... A national character is but the successful parish character; just as the national speech is but the successful parish dialect, the dialect, that is, of the district which came to be more — in many cases but a little more — influential than other dis- tricts, and so set its yoke on books and on [51] Education of Public Opinion society."* It is obvious that when we speak of the Age of EHzabeth or the Napoleonic era, we mean something very hke this. We are describing or recalling types, tendencies, and standards, which, particular or even individual in their ori- gin, spread themselves, through the working of imitation conscious or unconscious, over an entire people for a generation or more. When we endeavor to direct public opinion or to study its genesis, we are surprised and aston- ished to find how small a share the ordinary indi- vidual has in making up his own mind ; and while claiming independence, how largely he is depend- ent on forces and influences with which the stu- dent of psychology and of history is very familiar. This is due, in the first place, to the very small part which genuine thinking plays In the life of any of us. We are a bundle of reactions, and those reactions which are systematically directed by serious and sustained thought are not very numer- ous. Except for the purpose of living up to our reputation as human beings and for emergencies, most of us could get on very well with considerably ^ Bagehot, Physics and Politics, pp. 36, 37. [52] / diminished brain surface. Dr. Maudsley put the Education matter correctly when he said : " To say that the ^1 J^ublic great majority of men reason in the true sense of p^^^^on the word, is the greatest nonsense in the world ; they get their beliefs as they do their instincts and their habits, as a part of their inherited consti- tution, of their education, and the routine of their lives." The part which we thoughtlessly attribute to thought in guiding our beliefs and our actions, is really played, for the most part, by feeling and by imitation. We grow up Republicans or Demo- crats, Presbyterians or Episcopalians ; we do not reason ourselves — as a rule — into the one form of belief or the other, be it political or religious. We find our way naturally into a group or class by reason of hereditary tendencies, family ex- ample, or influence, and that impalpable ether of surrounding opinion, which, despite its impalpa- bility, regulates so much of our mental breathing. Then we energetically support our faith-formed convictions with ex parte reasons which appeal to the intellect. Like the Schoolmen, the motto of most of us is Credo, ut intelligam. We believe first and defend our beliefs afterward. [53] Education of Public Opinion I do not for a moment intend to convey the im- pression that we should hold no belief and take no action for which an impartially reasoned theory cannot be given. Such a doctrine would bring civilization to a standstill through paralysis; for the average individual has neither the capacity nor the opportunity to examine in a sternly judicial fashion the beliefs and the tendencies to act which come surging through his experience. But we should look the facts in the face, and " render there- fore unto Csesar the things which are Caesar's." We should give the feelings and the imitative in- stinct their due. When we do this we shall come nearer to understanding how that public opinion of which we and our neighbors are a part is formed, and how it may be and is changed or developed. Otherwise we shall lose sight of thc/all-important fact which Montesquieu long ago pointed out, that as society grows older the individual influ- ences the community less and the community shapes the individual more. Indeed, formal edu- cation itself is neither more nor less than this shaping of the individual by the community, and the bending of liim to its traditions, its habits, its [54] / convictions, — in short, to its will. The conscious Education reason of any individual, as compared to the sum of Public total of his apparently rational but really extra- ^P^^^^^n rational possessions, is in the position of the apex of an inverted pyramid. One is forcibly reminded by it of the way in which Hume and Mill under- take to explain our belief in an external world, from the momentary flashes of a given conscious- ness. It is an illusion of some writers on democracy uneven that the march of public opinion moves on with ^f^fj^fj^ the evenness and the regularity of an army on opinion parade. The contrary is the case. If from some distant planet we might be so endowed as to view public opinion pressing forward in the United States, we should find its skirmish-line serried and broken. Here on one side of the field some daring and creative leader has dashed ahead and occu- pied an exposed height with his small band of followers, and is calling upon the troops to follow and to join him. But they, interested in other directions, are a long time in hearing and a still longer time in heeding his call. We readily recognize that it has been after this fashion that [55] Education the movements for the reform of the civil service of Public and of the ballot were set in motion ; it is in this Upimon ^g^y ^^^^ Qj^g needed political reform after another ~ will be brought about. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump. In so far Matthew Arnold's discouraging doctrine of the remnant has some significance for us. ^. The elite in jj jg true, as Le Bon says, that the advances of a democracy civilization are due to the small phalanx of emi- nent men which each civilized people possesses. Least of all can a democracy hope to succeed without an elite of its own. Only we must see to it that this elite is recruited from talent or capacity for public service of whatever kind, and is not artificially limited by conditions of birth or of wealth. In this respect I like to think that our practice is in advance of our rather shabby theory as to equality. Nature knows no such thing as equality. It is a human invention thrown up as an artificial barrier against selfishness and tyranny. The law of life is the development of the hetero- geneous, the dissimilar, the unequal. It tends away from the dull inefficiency of uniform equality toward the high effectiveness of well-organized [56] differences. Destroy inequality of talent and Education capacity, and life as we know it stops. Democ- 0/ Public racy becomes unthinkable. The corner-stone of ^P^'^^on democracy is natural inequality, its ideal the selection of the most fit. Liberty is far more precious than equality, and the two are mutually destructive. It is said that if all the hills and mountains of Europe were levelled off, it would result in producing a barren, dismal plain some nine hundred and odd feet higher than the present shore-line. The beauty and the productiveness of a continent would be gone. If all the wealth of the United States were divided equally among the population, it is estimated that we should each possess a capital of about $1100. Industry would be reduced to the lowest level ever known in modern times, everything which makes life agree- able would go out of it, and we should all be driven to a conflict and struggle for a bare subsistence to which the state of primitive war described by Hobbes would be as nothing. In practice, however, we are more reasonable. Our human delight in achievement thrusts our book-made theory aside, and we cheerfully recog- [57] Education nize leadership and public benefaction, though of Public we know we could not have done as well. A sort wpinion ^ q£ j.^pg ^j, national pieias is an excellent trait to cultivate, and we need more of it rather than less. Our occasional outbursts of appreciation and affection toward a public servant or representative whose achievements have been specially note- worthy, are creditable in high degree. Such tributes ennoble the people who have delighted to pay them, and they whisper to us that after all the only equality we really believe in is equality of rights and of opportunity. The individual who realizes what public opinion is and what is his own proper relation to it has, then, two things to bear in mind : (1) what he does not know, and (2) who knows it. It is his duty so to master some field of human interest and activity, however humble or however small, that he can, as to it, offer something to his neighbor worthy of imitation and of rational acceptance. It is his duty, too, to seek the best and highest models for imitation and rational acceptance in fields apart from his own, and to recognize ex- cellence and fitness wherever found and to defer [58] Relation of the individ- ual to public opinion to them. The crude and dangerous notion that Education any citizen is as well fitted as his neighbor for ^f Public any public post is not a tenet of democracy, but ^P'^'^^on. of ochlocracy, rule by the mob. For the conduct of public business the party The party system has been devised and slowly perfected, until in England and in the United States it has reached a high degree of organization and effi- ciency. Its influence in shaping, in controlling, and in expressing public opinion is so enormous that it deserves most careful consideration. Political parties had their origin in personal interests which it was desired to transform into public policies, and they are very far from having lost that characteristic to-day. Yet they, and they alone, make popular government possible, and the individual has a duty toward them which is neither fulfilled nor commuted by the denuncia- tion of party abuses or by cynical contempt for party limitations and shortcomings. Men must cooperate, and to cooperate for political purposes is to be a member of a political party. One may be a member of a party formally and so hope to exercise some influence upon its policies, or he [59] Education of Public Opinion may support it generally without professing al- legiance to its public declarations or loyalty to its leaders. In the latter case, he destroys almost all chance of being heard concerning constructive policies and measures, and in return gains per- haps something in the power of free and destruc- tive criticism; although this is on the whole doubtful. In any event, he makes, in my judg- ment, a distinct sacrifice, and impairs his influence as a factor in shaping public opinion. I assent cordially to the doctrine that a political party is a means and not an end, and to the claim that the upright and conscientious citizen will at times be forced to separate himself from his party associa- tions because of his objection to some party policy or to some party representative. But this ought to be an unusual and abnormal act, and never taken without due regard for a sense of proportion and after careful weighing of the probable in- fluence of the act upon remote as well as upon immediate ends. It is not infrequently good judg- ment in politics to bear those ills we have rather than fly to others that we know not of. As a practical matter, it has been a distinct gain [60] to our American politics that during the past Education twenty years there have been influential individuals of Public and groups, and influential journals, which have ^P^^^on professed and acted upon a policy of independence of party. This is particularly true where has been Action inde discovered that basest device of partisans, an open Pendent of party or concealed alliance of the party organizers of both parties against political virtue and disinter- ested public service. In such a case, a guerilla warfare on behalf of virtue and decency is about all that is possible, and it ought always to be waged unceasingly. The inveterate independent does a public service so long as his independence is certainly based on principle and is without sus- picion of personal feeling. He must, however, resign himself to being effective only through criticism, and at the risk of his critical habit be- coming censoriousness and querulousness. The public quickly resent either. E he is able, now and then, to accomplish any constructive work in the field of legislation, his agent will prove to have been either the political party he has lately left or the political party he has not yet joined. But an extension of the policy of acting in small, [61] Education indefinite, swiftly evaporating groups, outside of of Public the large party organizations and in opposition Upmion _ i^Q them, would be a distinct loss and a danger to our political system. An independent vote which must be reasoned with and convinced, and which is able to turn the ^cale of success now in one direction and now in another, is a most admirable political stimulant. It spurs the parties on to their best efforts, and exerts an influence out of all proportion to its numbers. Yet to disintegrate political parties in the interest of cross-voting of all kinds and on all occasions would be disastrous. To see to what it would lead, one has only to recall the kaleidoscopic changes of former years in the government of France, based upon successive votes in the Chamber of Deputies, or to recall the methods by which Bismarck was accustomed to build up a parliamentary majority in the Reich- stag. In this matter, as in others, it is not wise to overlook the saying of Aristotle, in his Politics: "Two principles have to be kept in view: what is possible, what is becoming; at these every man ought to aim." To fail to see the possible in politics in the pursuit of the becoming, is to forbid [62] / accomplishment. Such an one is hke the Hora- Education tian rustic:— of Public Cj'DZTZXOft Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis ; at ille " Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum. On the other hand, to fail to see the becoming in clutching at the possible, is to fall into the habit of opportunism, of shifting compromise, which can only end by reducing principle to interest. The true spirit of compromise, as marked off from the spurious, will consider, with Aristotle, both the possible and the becoming, and it will be manifested by "a wise suspense in forming opin- ions, a wise reserve in expressing them, and a wise tardiness in trying to realize them." ^ Political parties, like armies, need leaders, and The leader and the boss leaders develop for them. Whether the leader be competent, patriotic, and responsible, or ignorant, selfish, and irresponsible, depends upon circum- stances. In the latter case, he is that now famiHar and ominous product of our political system, the Boss, of which public opinion cannot too soon take proper account. Where the Boss is most powerful, we may observe in practical operation 'Morley, On Compromise, p. 94. [63] Education a system of government which is unknown to our of Public laws, and which under the fair forms of democracy Upinion. jj^g reverted to oHgarchy of the most brutal and grasping type. It bullies the weak, overawes the timid, bribes the ambitious, and buys outright the stubborn opponent-who shrewdly takes that way of making himself valuable to it. A Boss never leads; he drives. The distinction between a political leader and a political Boss is perfectly clear. The leader studies only the public good and party success as contributing toward it. He draws to himself the strongest, the wisest, and the best of those who bear his party's name. He urges forward talent and capacity; he represses presuming ignorance and self-seeking. He rests his case upon his capacity to persuade and to con- vince the people. By sheer intellectual strength and vigor of will he attracts men to him and to his policies. So Hamilton and Jefferson, so Lincoln and Douglas, so Gladstone. The political Boss, on the other hand, is below the horizon from which the public good is visible. Party success is his highest aim, and party success is interpreted in terms of his personal supremacy. He sur- [64] / rounds himself with the weak and obedient, Education with those whose conscience is held safe prisoner of Public behind the bars of ambition and desire for gain. ^P^^^on He bases his hope of victory upon effective political machinery, upon a lavish expenditure of money, and upon promises of preferment. His arguments are alternately exhortations and threats. If vic- torious, his first thought is the aggrandizement and enrichment of himself and his family, and, if possible, of some of the more important of his followers. If defeated, he is at once in secret communication with his triumphant adversary for such share of the spoils as will serve to support him and his until the next contest occurs. More than one state and not a few American cities can frame a particular visage in this outline. What is to be done with the Boss ? First, try to understand why he exists. The Boss is the joint product of two factors — the checks and balances in our constitutional system, and the modern alliance of business and politics. A written constitution is a device to fix man's Value of political judgment and to protect it from his Nations political passions. Our own Constitution may [65] Education well be called marvellous in view of what the cen- 0/ Public tury has seen. But its structure, particularly as Upifiion^ imitated in the several commonwealths, while making parties necessary, has also made it easy for them to be abused. Mr. Ford, in his interest- ing book on the Rise and Growth of American Politics, has laid proper emphasis upon this much-neglected fact, and so helps us to see clearly that something more than ordinary human per- versity is at work in producing the Boss. "The influence moulding all the conceptions, the idea regulating all the contrivances of those ardent politicians and able young lawyers [who framed the Constitution], intent upon obtaining some practical result to their labors, was the Whig doc- trine of checks and balances of authority through distribution of the powers of government." ^ Unrestrained power and undivided responsibility were, therefore, lodged nowhere. The shadows of decaying absolutism were still dark and fearful. So it happened that in the Constitution central power was checked by power in the common- wealths, the executive by power in the legislature. ' Ford, Rise and Growth of American Politics, p. 51. [66] / Without some unifying force this machinery Education would work with difficulty, if at all. There were ^Z Public many clashes and much crimination and recrimi- ? nation while precedents were being made and policies established. Political parties grew up to provide, outside of the legal framework of government, the initiative, the control, and the responsibility for which no adequate constitu- tional provision was made. So it happens that the people have created for themselves extra- constitutional assemblies and conventions, or- ganized according to party rules and respecting party beliefs, in which are framed the declara- tions of policy which are then submitted to the voters for arbitrament. In this respect the United States is in advance of Great Britain, where party policies are still largely framed, as was once the case here, by legislative representatives. No mind can picture the chaos which would result if county officers, state officers, and national officers, acted as each might will, without harmony of principle or unity of plan. One would defy another, executive would antagonize legislature, and legislature executive: the wheels of govern- [67] Education ment would either stop or they would revolve of Public with a rapidity which would enable their revolu- pimon _ |.Jqj^ |.q ^^ recognized as such in the historical sense. What force or power acts as governor on all this complicated machinery, regulates its speed, brings about harmony of its parts, and so effectiveness in its operation ? I answer, party organization. As extra-constitutional as the Brit- ish cabinet, it is, Uke that body, the power which directs and controls the government. That which the framers of the Constitution would not permit in the government has grown up outside of it. This is the real basis for the peculiar place occupied by the American political parties, and it ought never to be lost sight of in estimating the meaning, the abuses, and the necessary limitations of party action. But these powerful party organizations, with their abundant opportunities for advancement to power and to fame, have attracted the ambition of men whose aims and methods are not worthy ones- Such men are the raw material for the Boss, be it in ward, city, county, or state. To manufacture the finished Boss out of this raw material requires [68] / the possession of something, power or patronage, Education which may be sold. PubHc officers were the first ^/ Public valuable counters in the game, public privileges V^^^^^ are the second. The principle of civil service re- form must be so pressed forward and extended that the public offices shall be torn from the grasp of the Boss and his office-holding oligarchy and returned to the people to be allotted to worthy candidates, of whatever political creed, on the basis of merit alone. That is the only possible principle of civil service administration which is consistent with democracy. Of recent years the sale of public privileges has Business in proved more profitable than the peddling of offices. This is due to the close alliance between business and politics which has grown up in this country since the Civil War, and which has been helped on amazingly by the necessity of securing legislative sanction and administrative protection for the thousand and one large enterprises of a semi-public character which have developed all over the country, but particularly in and about the rapidly growing centres of population. These enterprises are very profitable; they begin to [69] Education make returns at once. Men of affairs are eager 0/ Public to embark upon them ; they will be a public Upituon^ benefit. What more stimulating to a legislature than the liint that the projectors of a given under- taking, for which a public franchise is asked, are good party men, and what return more natural on their part than a handsome contribution for cam- paign purposes^ to the Boss who has dropped the hint ? These are " business methods " in pohtics, and they are far more dangerous to freedom than the more overt and dramatic forms of treason. The one question which should never be heard in pure politics is the same question which should never be heard in a university : it is the business man's question — will it pay ? Ask, is it right, is it just, is it wise, is it necessary ; but never ask, will it pay ? An interesting example of the working of this business principle in politics may be found in the recent political history of the city of New York. The scene is laid in New York, where a legislative committee is making inquiry concerning some aspects of the municipal government. In the witness chair sits Richard Croker, a private citizen [70] / in the eye of the law, but in fact, at the time, the Education unchallenged monarch of a community of three of Public and a half millions of people : — Opinion "Then we have this," Mr. Moss [counsel for the investigating committee] suggested, "that you participate in the selection of judges before they are elected, and then participate in emolument that comes of their judicial proceedings ? " "Yes, sir," Mr. Croker answered. " And it goes in your pocket ? " "Yes; that is my own money," the witness asserted. " And the nomination of the judges by Tammany Hall in this city is almost equivalent to an elec- tion, is it not ? " Mr. Moss asked. "Yes." " So that, if you have a controlling voice in the affairs of your party and secure the nomination of true men, you may be sure that at least in the Real Estate Exchange and in the firm of Meyer & Croker you will, as a true Democrat, get some of the patronage ? " "We expect them at least to be friendly," Mr. Croker answered, deprecatingly. [71] Education " And get a part of the patronage ? " of Public "Yes, sir." Opinion^ " So you are working for your own pocket ? " "All the time, and you, too," the Tammany leader answered in a firm tone. " Then it is not ajnatter of wide statesmanship, or patriotism altogether, with you, but it is wide statesmanship, patriotism, and personal gain mixed up ? " Mr. Moss remarked. "It is 'to the victor belong the spoils,' " was the only reply Mr. Croker could make, but it was brimful of meaning.^ This is likely long to remain the locus classicus as to the relation between modern politics and modern business. Its principle is of wide ap- plication; its extraordinary features are its brutal frankness, its naive unconsciousness of wrong-doing, and the fact that the offices whose control is avowed ought to be the most sacred in our entire government, those of the judges of the Supreme Court. The less of such "business" we have in politics, the longer we shall have any politics to engage in. 1 New York Tribune, April 15, 1899. [72] / In a brief discussion it is quite impossible to Education follow the formation of public opinion through its of Public various phases. The part played by the press, V^^^^n by the pulpit, and by the platform, each needs j^^^jj^j^j^^j study. The fact that men frequently act not as responsibility . for public individuals but as groups, in takmg part m deter- poUcy mining the policy of a still larger group, is of great significance and of much practical importance. The so-called labor vote, the Grand Army vote, the Irish vote, and other groups are cajoled and humored because of this fact. Many members of such a group have already abdicated any in- dependence they may have possessed, in joining it, and are thenceforward counted as part of the faithful following of a group-leader who trades and sells or stampedes his followers, as circum- stances may determine. The effect of increasing toleration is also very marked. It aids in securing that full hearing and that suspension of judg- ment which always make for wisdom of decision and for sanity of action. I have now set out the main facts to which I desired to direct attention. My argument has aimed to show the necessary dependence of indi- [73] Education vidual well-being upon social and political health, of Public the responsibility which rests upon every in- OpmioTi dividual to promote that health, and the factors, individual and party, which are at work in the process. That the party system has a stable foun- dation and that the_parties have just claims upon us, I hold most strongly. That the system is, and perhaps always will be, liable to abuse, is self- evident. That the Boss must be displaced for the leader at all hazards, goes vsdthout saying. To accomplish this, the first step is relentless Boss punishment at the polls. The second step is to take away his capital by estabhshing a reformed and democratic civil service and by putting a stop to his ability to dispose of public privileges for personal or for party gain. The third step is to relegate business principles to business, and to confine politics to ends properly political. All this again comes back to the point from which we started, the individual citizen. There is no trench in which he may hide, no bomb- proof to which the weapons of responsibility will not follow him. Are you politically alert? Are you politically honest ? If not, you are a bad [74] / citizen and a corrupter, however innocent, of Education public opinion. If you are politically alert, the <^/ PMic standard which you set is a high one, worthy ^P^^^'On of imitation by your neighbor. You are doing something to educate pubhc opinion. [75] / DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION AN ADDRESS delivered before the National Educational Association AT Buffalo, New York, July 7, 1896 DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION Philosophers, poets, and sometimes men of Democracy science are fond of speculating on an answer (md to the question, Whither are we tending? But t^d,ucation more personal matters and more immediate in- terests detain the attention of the vast majority of mankind. The mere question of absolute physical direction, to say notliing of the tendencies of institutions and ideals, lies far beyond the range of vision of the average man. The pas- ., , . . , 11 Ouovadis? senger m a railway tram movmg west may w'alk ^ leisurely eastward, within the limits of the train, and feel certain of his direction and speed. But the train travelling westward, forty miles an hour, is on the surface of a planet that revolves on its axis from west to east with a velocity of a thousand miles an hour. More than this, the earth is also plunging forAvard in space, in its orbit about the sun, at the fearful rate of more than eleven hundred miles per minute ; while as a mem- [79] Democracy ber of the solar system it drifts rapidly with its ^^d fellows toward a distant point in the constellation Education^ Hercules. Perhaps the whole sidereal system, the entire cosmos even, has yet other motions of its own. How hopeless, then, is it to attempt to trace the exact path, judged by an absolute standard, of a body moving on the earth's sur- face ! The very conception staggers us, and our imaginations fall back helpless. Nor is it otherwise with the directions and tendencies of things intellectual and institu- tional. The Laudator temporis acti is convinced that civiHzation is just now on a downward grade. The old order has changed and given place to a new; and the new order seems to him to lack something of the robustness, the idealism, the valor, of the old. His antagonist, fresh from contemplating the abstract rights of man as depicted by modern political philosophers, sees hope and promise only in the future; to such an observer the past is a record of folly, imperfection, and crime. The sane man may be forgiven if at times he fails to listen with patience to either advocate. He loses his sanity, however, if he [80] attempts to take refuge in cynicism and pessimism. Democracy While we may not hope to grasp fully the signifi- etna cance of movements of which we ourselves are a -^^^^^^^ow. part, we can nevertheless study them, trace their beginnings, and measure their present effects. Such an attitude, hopeful yet cautious, leads to the only point of view wliich is at once scientific and philosophical. However difficult it may be to estimate present tendencies with any precision or authority, there is a widespread instinctive feeling among thought- ful men, as Mr. Kidd has pointed out in the first pages of his Social Evolution, that a definite stage in the evolution of our civilization is draw- ing to a close and that we are face to face with a new era. The history of the nineteenth century lends color to the suggestion that the new era has already begun. The evidence for this is drawn from the records of material advance, of scientific progress, and of political development. The material advances made since the nine- The new era teenth century opened are more numerous and more striking than the sum total of those that all previous history records. We find it difli- [81] Education Democracy cult even to imagine the world of our grand- ^^^ fathers, and almost impossible to appreciate or understand it. Without the factory, without the manifold products and applications of steam and electricity, without even the newspaper and the sulphur match, the djetails of our daily life would be strangely different. In our time wholly new mechanical and economic forces are actively at work, and have already changed the appearance of the earth's surface. What another hundred years may bring forth no one dares to predict. The scientific progress of the century is no less marvellous and no less revolutionary in its effects than the material advance. The nebular hy- pothesis, once the speculative dream of a few mathematicians and philosophers, is now a scien- tific commonplace. The geology o'f Lyell, the astronomy of Herschel, the biology of von Baer, of Darwin, and of Huxley, the physiology of Miiller, the physics of Helmholtz and of Roentgen, are already part of the common knowledge of all educated men. To us the world and its constitu- tion present an appearance very different from that which was familiar to our ancestors. [82] But most striking and impressive of all move- Democracy ments of the century is the political development «"<^ toward the form of government known as democ- ^^^ racy. Steadily and doggedly throughout the ten decades the movement toward democracy has gone its conquering way. When the century opened, democracy was a chimera. It had been attempted in Greece and Rome and again in the Middle Ages ; and the reflecting portion of man- Spread of democracy kind believed it to be a failure. Whatever its possibilities in a small and homogeneous com- munity, it was felt to be wholly inapplicable to large states. The contention that government could be carried on by what Mill called collective mediocrity rather than by the intelligent few, was felt to be preposterous. The horrible spectre of the French Revolution was fresh in the minds of men. The United States, hardly risen from their cradle, were regarded by the statesmen of Europe with a curiosity, partly amused, partly disdainful. Germany was governed by an absolute monarch, the grandnephew of the great Frederick himself. In England a constitutional oligarchy, with Pitt at its head, was firmly intrenched in power. The [83] Education Democracy Napoleonic reaction was in full swing in France. ^^^"' How different the spectacle at the opening of the twentieth century ! In Great Britain one far- reaching reform after another has left standing only the shell of oligarchy ; the spirit and support of British civilization are democratic. Despite the influence of other forces, great progress is be- ing made toward the democratization of Germany. France, after a period of unexampled trouble and unrest, has founded a successful and, we are glad to believe, a stable republic. The United States have disappointed every foe and falsified the pre- dictions of every hostile critic. The governmental framework constructed by the fathers for less than four millions of people, scattered along a narrow strip of seaboard, has expanded easily to meet the needs of a diverse population twenty times as large, gathered into great cities and distributed over an empire of seacoast, mountain, plain, and forest. It has withstood the shock of the greatest civil war of all time, fought by men of high in- telligence and determined convictions. It has permitted the development and expansion of a civilization in which there is equality of oppor- [84] tunity for all, and where the highest civil and Deviocracy military honors have been thrust upon the children o'zcZ of the plain people by their grateful fellow-citizens. Education So significant has this phenomenon of democ- racy become, so widespread is its influence, and so dominating are its ideals, that we have rightly begun to study it both with the impartial eye of the historian and by the analytic method of the scientist. The literature of democracy for the past half century is extremely important; and Tocqueville, Bagehot, Scherer, Carlyle, Maine, Bryce, and Lecky are but a few of the great names that have contributed to it. Through all the pages of these writers runs an expression of the conviction that the stream of tendency toward democracy can neither be turned back nor per- manently checked. Some of these students of democracy are its enthusiastic advocates, others are its hostile critics: all alike seem to resign themselves to it. The process of substituting this new social and political system for an older one has not been un- interrupted or untroubled, nor has it given perfect satisfaction. As the political pendulum has con- . [85] Democracy tinued to swing through a wide but diminishing o^nd arc, the cries have been loud and constant that Laucatipn injustice and favoritism have not been suppressed, that all are not equally prosperous, and that not even democracy is a cure for all our distress and dissatisfaction. Much of this is no doubt due to the tendency in all stages of history, spoken of by Burke, to ascribe to prevailing forms of gov- ernment ills that in reality flow from the con- stitution of human nature. But in part at least — in how great part perhaps we fail to recognize — it is due to the imperfect and halting applica- tion of our democratic ideals and the very partial acceptance of our democratic responsibilities. The platitudes of democracy are readily accepted by the crowd; the full depth of its principles is far from being generally understood. It is easy Equality and to cry " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," and to carve the words in letters of stone upon public buildings and public monuments. It is not so easy to answer the query whether, in truth, un- restricted liberty and perfect equality are at all compatible. For it has been pointed out that liberty leads directly to inequality, based upon the [86] liberty natural differences of capacity and application Democracy among men. Equality, on the other hand, in any c!^^ economic sense, is attainable only by the suppres- •'^^^^^"O^ sion, in some degree, of liberty, in order that, di- rectly or indirectly, the strong arm of the state may be able to hold back the precocious and to push forward the sluggish. Obviously there is food for thought in this, — thought that may serve to check the rhetorical exuberance of the en- thusiast, and lead him to ask whether we yet fully grasp what democracy means. Democracy is, as I have said, a movement so novel, so sweeping, that we have not yet had time to compare it closely, in all its phases, with mon- archy and oligarchy. The advantages of those forms of political organization were manifest when society was young and man's institutional life yet undeveloped. As time went on, the weak- nesses of such forms of government became appar- ent. The plunge into democracy was made, and we have usually gone no farther than to contrast its blessings with what we know of the oppression and iniquity that resulted from kingship and oligarchy in the early modern period. We must, [87] Democracy however, go farther than this, and gain a truer and and deeper insight into the institutional Hfe of Education ^i^j^.^ ^^ ^^^ ^ p^^. It is just here that we find evidence of the close relations that exist between democracy and edu- cation. So long as the direction of man's institu- tional life was in the hands of one or the few, the need for a wide diffusion of political intelligence was not strongly felt. The divine right of kings found its correlative in an almost diabolical ignorance of the masses. There was no educa- tional ideal, resting upon a social and political necessity, that was broad enough to include the whole people. But the rapid widening of the basis of sovereignty has changed all that. No deeper conviction pervades the people of the United States and of France, who are the most aggressive exponents of democracy, than that the preservation of liberty under the law, and of the institutions that are our precious possession and proud heritage, depends upon the intelligence of the whole people. It is on this unshakable foun- dation that the argument for public education at pubhc expense really rests. [88] It was not by accident that the Greek philoso- Democracy phers made their contributions to educational ^^^^ theory in treatises on the nature and functions ^*^^ of the state. Both Plato and Aristotle had a deep insight into the meaning of man's social and institutional life. To live together with one's Education and politics fellows in a community involves fitness so to live. This fitness, in turn, implies discipline, instruc- tion, training; that is, education. The highest type of individual life is found in community life. Ethics passes into or includes politics, and the education of the individual is education for the state. The educated Greek at the height of his country's development was taught to regard participation in the public service alike as a duty and a privilege. The well-being of the community was constantly before him as an ideal of personal conduct. To depart from that point of view is to entail the gravest consequences. That a large proportion of our people, and among their num- ber some of the most highly trained, have departed from it, needs no proof. Failure to understand the political life of a democratic state and failure to participate fully [89] Democracy in it, lead directly to false views of the state and and its relations to the individual citizen. Instead Education ^^ being regarded as the sum total of the citizens who compose it, the state is, in thought at least, then regarded as an artificial creation, the play- thing of so-called- politicians and wire-pullers. This view, that the individual and the state are somehow independent each of the other, is not without support in modern political philosophy, but it is a crude and superficial view. It gives rise to those fallacies that regard the state either as a tyrant to be resisted or as a benefactor to be courted. No democracy can endure permanently on either basis. The state is the completion of the life of the individual, and without it he would not wholly live. To inculcate that doctrine should be an aim of all education in a democracy. To live up to it should be the ideal of the nation's educated men. Impossible in theory as the separation of the state from the individuals who compose it seems, yet in practice it is found to exist. This is true in the United States, and in some localities more than others. Our constitutional system, elabo- [90] The individ- ual and the state rately adjusted so that each individual's choice may Democracy count in the ascertainment of the common will, <*^^ now shelters a system of party organization and ^"'^^^ *^^ of political practice, undreamt of by the fathers, that, in many parts of the country, effectually reduces our theoretical democracy to an oligarchy, and that oligarchy by no means an aristocracy. With here and there an exception, the educated men of the country hold themselves too much aloof — or are held aloof — from participation in what is called practical politics. That field of activity which should attract the highest intelh- gence of the nation too often repels it. When a man of the most highly trained powers engages in political life, he becomes an object of curiosity and comment. If he despises the petty arts and chicaneries of the demagogue, he becomes "un- popular," or is held to be "unpractical." After a brief interval he passes off the public stage with- out even a perfunctory recognition of his services. It is safe to say that the framers of no government, least of all the framers of our own, contemplated a practical outcome such as this. If education and training unfit men for political life, then there [91] Democracy is something wrong either with our political life cind or with our education. Education rpj^^ j^^j^ ^^^ women of America, in particular the teachers, should address themselves to this question with determination and zeal. Instruc- tion in civil government is good ; the inculcation of patriotism is good ; the flag upon the school- house is good. But all these devices he upon the surface. The real question involved is ethical. It reaches deep down to the very foundations of morality. It is illuminated by history. The public education of a great democratic people has other aims to fulfil than the extension of scientific knowledge or the development of literary culture. It must prepare for intelligent citizenship. More than a century ago Burke wrote that "the generahty of pedple are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics. There are but very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before their eyes at differ- ent times and occasions, so as to form the whole into a distinct system." This is the warning of one of the greatest of publicists, that a thoroughly instructed and competent public opinion on po- [92] Education in a democracy / litical matters is difficult to attain. Yet, unless Democracy we are to surrender the very principle on which ^^^^ democracy rests, we must struggle to attain it. ^^" *°^ Something may be accomplished by precept, something by direct instruction, much by example. The words " politics " and " politician " must be rescued from the low esteem into which they have fallen, and restored to their ancient and honorable meaning. It is safe to say that the framers of our Constitution never foresaw that the time would come when thousands of intelligent men and women would regard "politics" as beneath them, and when a cynical unwillingness to par- ticipate in the choice of persons and policies would develop among the people. Yet such is, of course, the case. In a great state like New York, for example, a governor is chosen every second year. The power and dignity of the office make it one of the greatest in the land. About one and a half mil- lion qualified voters are entitled to participate in the choice. Theoretically any competent person might be put forward for the office, and every in- dividual's preference would be recorded and [93] Democracy weighed. As a matter of fact, however, the choice and Education The good citizen of the state must be made between two persons, who in turn will be selected by, perhaps, ten per cent of the electorate, at the suggestion or dictation of not more than a dozen men. Had such a system, or anything like it, been proposed at the time the Constitution was adopted, there would have been instant rebellion. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" would not have seemed worth having under such conditions. Yet, now that it has come about, there is no very great dissatis- faction with it. The system could be broken up in a twelvemonth if men really cared to break it up. It exists, therefore, by popular consent, if not with popular approval. Its objective results may be as good as those that would be reached by the ideal system; but its effect on the indi- vidual is certainly unfortunate. It induces a feel- ing of irresponsibility for public policy and a lack of interest in it that are destructive of good citi- zenship. The good citizen is not the querulous critic of public men and public affairs, however intelligent he may be; he is rather the constant participator in political struggles, who has well- [94] grounded convictions and a strong determination Democracy to influence, by all honorable means, the opinion ^^^d of the community. Were it otherwise, universal Education suffrage would not be worth having, and public education would be a luxury, not a necessity. We do not better ourselves or serve the public interest by berating those who do interest them- selves continually in politics, when their aims and their methods are not to our liking. There can be no doubt that the patriotic and well-intentioned element in the community is stronger and more numerous than the self-seeking and evil-disposi- tioned. It has the remedy in its own hands, and it is one of the chief duties of our education to enforce this truth. Much of the disinclination to engage in active Bad effect political life that is noticeable among a portion of g ^°' ^ our people is to be traced, I believe, to the evil effects upon political standards and methods that flow from the debasing and degrading system of treating public office as a reward for partisan activity, that has gained so strong a hold in the United States. The spoils system is absolutely undemocratic and utterly unworthy of toleration [95] Education. Democracy by an intelligent people. Suppose that it ruled ^^^^ the schools, as it rules so many other departments of public administration : then we should expect to see the election of a mayor in Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, or San Francisco, followed by hun- dreds of changes amoTig the public-school teachers, made solely for political reasons. How long would that be permitted to go on without a protest that would be heard and heeded from Maine to Texas ? Yet why should we, as good citizens, be more tolerant of such abuses in other depart- ments of the government ? Patriotic men have noted with gratification the progress that is making toward the elimination of this evil. A determined band have kept the issue before the public for nearly a generation, and now they have the satisfaction of seeing the greater portion of the national service wrested from the defiling hand of the spoils hunter. In the state of New York the people themselves put into their present constitution an emphatic declaration on the subject. The full effect of this declaration, splendidly upheld and broadly interpreted by the courts, is just beginning to dawn upon the [96] foes of a reformed and efficient public service. Democracy From this advance of sound sentiment and honest o-^d policy we may take every encouragement. But Education much remains to be done. Public sentiment must be first interested, then educated. Efficient public service is a mark of civilization. To turn over the care of great public undertakings to the self-seeking camp-followers of some politi- cal potentate, is barbaric. Teachers are the first to insist that incompetent and untrained persons shall not be allowed in the service of the schools. Why, then, should they tolerate the sight of a house-painter, instead of an engineer, supervising the streets and roadways of a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, or that of an illiterate hanger- on of a party boss presiding over the public works of a great metropolis ? These instances, drawn at random from recent political history, are typical of conditions that will be found widely diffused throughout our public service. Those conditions exist because of bad citizenship, low ideals of public service, and wretchedly inadequate moral vision. They will not be remedied until each one of us assumes his share of the task. [97] Democracy It is instructive, too, to note that the spoils cfw<^ system has diverted public interest in great tiaucation measure from choice between policies to a choice between men. Two hundred years ago men made great sacrifices for an opportunity to share in the making of the laws by which they were governed. Yet when the people of the state of New York were called upon to vote, at one and the same election, for a governor and for or against a new constitution, containing many important and some novel propositions, more than a million and a quarter men voted for a candidate for gov- ernor, while less than three-quarters of a million ex- pressed themselves regarding the proposed consti- tution. And this is by no means a solitary instance of the tendency that it illustrates. A rational and intelligent democracy will first discusS questions of principle and then select agents to carry their de- terminations into effect. To fix our interest solely on individuals, and to overlook or neglect the principles for which they stand, is not intelligent. Imperfections It is a serious error, too, to believe, and to spread "^^ the belief, that democracies have nothing to learn as to principles of government and notliing to [98] improve. From the time of Aristotle the dangers Democracy that are inherent in democracy have been known owa and discussed. But in our time men are often ^^^ ^^^ too blinded by the brilliancy of the manifest suc- cesses and advantages of this form of government to be able or willing to consider carefully the other side of the picture. How long, for example, could the American Congress maintain its power and prestige, if its membership was split up into half a score of warring groups, as in France.'' How long will the American Senate continue to call forth the respect and confidence of the people, if its methods of transacting public business and its inability to close its own debates are allowed to continue ? How long would life in our great cities be endurable, if their administration be turned over permanently to the ignorant and the rapacious ? What more distressing division of our people can there be than one on sectional lines, such as took place in 1860 and such as was attempted again in 1896 ? Is it possible to believe that our native optimism is all that is needed to extricate us from these dangers — dangers not imaginary, but terribly real ? [99] Democracy The difficulties of democracy are the oppor- "^" tunities of education. If our education be sound, ITT 7 J • j^aucatton •£ -j^ ^^^ ^^^ emphasis on individual responsibility for social and political progress, if it counteract the anarchistic tendencies that grow out of self- ishness and greed, if it promote a patriotism that reaches farther than militant jingoism and battle- ships, then we may cease to have any doubts as to the perpetuity and integrity of our insti- tutions. I am profoundly convinced that the greatest educational need of our time, in higher and lower schools alike, is a fuller appreciation on the part of the teachers of what human institutions really mean and what tremendous moral issues and principles they involve. The ethics of individual life must be traced to its roots in the ethics of the social whole. The family, property, the common law, the state, and the church, are all involved. These, and their products, taken together, con- stitute civihzation and mark it off from barbarism. Inheritor of a glorious past, each generation is a trustee for posterity. To preserve, protect, and transmit its inheritance unimpaired, is its highest [100] / duty. To accomplish this is not the task of the Democracy few, but the duty of all. «^^ That democracy alone will be triumphant Education which has both intelligence and character. To develop them among the whole people is the task of education in a democracy. Not by vainglorious boasting, not by self-satisfied indifference, not by selfish and indolent withdrawal from partici- democracy pation in the interests and government of the com- munity, but rather by the enthusiasm, born of intense conviction, that finds the happiness of each in the good of all, will our educational ideals be satisfied and our free government be placed beyond the reach of the forces of dissolution and decay. [101] / / INDEX / Achievement, Recognition of, 57-58. Acton, Lord, on the theory of equality of the French Rev- olution, 7-9. Administration, efficient, by single responsible agents, A false view of, 36 ; fun- damental distinction be- tween government and, 36- 37. Advances, Material, of the nineteenth century, 81-82. Americans schooled in de- mocracy, 5. Aristocracy of intellect and service. Need of an, 14 ; Lincoln an immortal ex- ample of, 19. Arnold, Matthew, Rebuke of Professor Clifford by, 28; doctrine of the remnant, 56. Association, the essence of democracy, 37. Athenian citizen, Pericles on the, 43. Bagehot on unconscious imi- tation, 51. Beliefs and actions. Our, guided by feeling and imi- tation, 53-55. Boss, The, 63-65 ; party suc- cess in terms of personal supremacy, the aim of, 64 ; why he exists, 65 ; raw material for and manufac- ture of, 68-69 ; civil ser- vice reform must over- throw, 69 ; must be dis- placed, 74. British civilization. The spirit and support of, democratic, 84. Burke, Edmund, on the duty of a representative, 17-18; on what Parliament is, 18 ; on public opinion in poli- tics, 92. Business in politics, 69-72 ; Richard Croker on, 71-72; must be ehminated, 74. Byron, Lord, on democracy, 6. Character and intelligence. The upbuilding of, provided for, 4. Character, national, The mak- ing of, 51-52. Checks and balances of au- thority in government, 65- 66. Citizen, The bad, 49-50; the good, 94-95. Citizenship, bad. Conditions arising from, and our in- dividual responsibility to- ward, 97. Civilization the result of wealth and leisure, 27 ; a new era in the evolution of, 81-82. Class distinctions, Passing of, 48. Index [105] XndcX Clemenceau, M., on individu- alist democracy and liberty, 6-7. Cleveland, Grover, as execu- _ tive, 33. Community-given monopoly results in exploitation, 22. Compromise, The true spirit of, 63. Congress, and state legisla- tures — their one "proper concern, 18; invading the province of the executive and the judiciary, 30-33. Constitution, Checks and bal- ances provided in the, 65-67. Croker, Richard, on business in politics, 71-72. Cross- voting. Dangers of, 62. Demagogues, False democ- racy exalts, and decries leaders, 17 ; as mischief- makers, 25. Democracies, Most early, were oligarchies, 46. Democracy and education, 79-101. Democracy, True and false, 3-39 ; is it understood ? 5 ; what is democracy ? 6 ; definitions of Byron and Mazzini, 6 ; debate on, between Juares and Cle- menceau, 6-7 ; socialistic and individualist, 7 ; clew to distinction between true and false, 10; true, will elevate wisest to leadership, 13 ; will provide education and opportunity, 14 ; char- acteristics of a false, 15 ; true, believes nothing set- tled till settled right, 16 ; creates leadership and fol- lows it, 16-17; Is democ- racy a faction? 19-20; to secure justice without sac- rificing Uberty, the purpose of true, 20; to prevent exploitation, 21, 23; to strengthen and protect the executive, 35-36 ; evils of false, 37-38 ; ideals of true, 38-39 ; place of pubUc opin- ion in a, 44-^5; modern theoretical often oligarchi- cal, 46 ; the elite in a, 56 ; natural inequality the cor- ner-stone of, 57 ; spread of, 83; in Great Britain, Ger- many, and France, and the United States, 84-85; the literature of, important, 85 ; platitudes of, accepted, prin- ciples of, not understood, 86 ; relations of, with edu- cation, 88 ; the state and the individual in a, 90-91 ; education in a, 92-93 ; im- perfections and difficulties of, 98-99 ; the opportuni- ties of education, 100 ; tri- umphant democracy, 101. Democrats, theoretical, Ameri- can and French, 46—47. Direction, Question of abso- lute physical, hopelessly in- determinate, 79-80. Douglas, 64. Economic and industrial life, Changes in, 20. Economic and social questions more pressing than political, 3. Educated men hold aloof from practical politics, 91. [106] / Education and moral regenera- tion, The hope for human nature lies in, 19-20, 22. Education and opportunity. True democracy will pro- vide, 14. Education, Democracy and, 79-101 ; close relations be- tween, 88. Education, Formal, the shap- ing of the individual by the community, 54-55. Education of public opinion, 43-75. Education, public, at public expense. Foundation of the argument for, 88; educa- tion and politics, 89 ; must prepare for intelligent citi- zenship, 92 ; and enforce, 95 ; the difficulties of de- mocracy the opportunities of, 100; the task of, in a , democracy, 101. Elite, The, in a democracy, 56. Equality, economic, and lib- erty, Everlasting contra- diction between, 7, 9-10, 57, 87 ; Lord Acton on, 7-8 ; Marat's theory of, 8-9 ; a false and spurious, 11 ; of rights and of opportunity, 58, 84. Equality, Nature knows no such thing as, 56-57. Equality, Political, incident to liberty, 9 ; and essential to it, 10. Equality the shibboleth of socialistic democracy, 7. Era, The new, 81-82. Estates, The, of the Middle Ages, 48. Evolution, Social and political, Index 47-48. Executive branch the most efficient representative of the popular will, 33, 34- 35 ; true democracy will strengthen the, 35-36. Exploitation of man by man, 20-21 ; of one by all, 21-22 ; how to be prevented, 23. Faculty, The directing, 26. Feelings and imitation, Part played by, in guiding our beliefs and actions, 52-55. Ford, H. J., on checks and balances of authority in government, 66. Fraternity, 7, 39, 86. Freedom of speech and of opinion, 47. Free state, A, and its founda- tions, 38; political integ- rity of, 44. French Revolution, Lord Ac- ton on the theory of equal- ity of the, 7-9; Taine on the mob element in the, 24- 25 ; the spectre of the, 83. Gladstone, 64. Governmental agents and in- dividual initiative, 20. Government and administra- tion. Compromise of, 36-37. Government, Effectiveness in operation of, secured through party organiza- tion, 67-68. Greek, The educated, 89. Group action in politics, 73. Hamilton, 64. Happiness and prosperity not universal, 19. [107] Index Human nature, Slow progress of, toward liighest ethical standards, 19. Hume, 55. Idols of the market-place, Worship of the, 3. Imitations, unconscious, Parts played by, 51-55. Independent, The political, 61. Independent vote, Value of an, 62. Individual initiative under state regulation, 24. Individual, Value of the, 14 ; relation between the com- munity and the, 22 ; com- plex relationships of the, 48-49 ; responsibility of, for political party, 73-74 ; the individual and the mass, 50-51 ; dependent on ex- ternal influences, 52 ; feel- ing and imitation, 53-54 ; relation of the, to public opinion, 58-59 ; to political parties, 59-60; and the state, 90-91. Jefferson contemplated de- mocracy and slavery side by side, 46 ; as a leader, 64. Juares, M., on socialistic democracy and equality, 6-7. Judiciary, Congress has no power to restrict the, 30-31. Justice demands inequality, 15 ; not yet established between man and man, 19. Kidd, Benjamin, on the dawn of a new era, 81. Kings, Divine right of, and ignorance of the masses, 88. Labor, Confusion in use of term, 25-26. Law and authority, Decline in reverence and respect for, 37-38. Leadership, Genuine, possible in a democratic state, 18. Leader, The political, and the Boss, 63-65 ; examples of true leaders, 64. Le Bon, quoted, 56. Legislative branch of govern- ment inferior to executive and judicial in representing the will of the people, 29-30 ; invasion of their provinces by the, 31-33 ; influence of private interests with the, 35. Liberty and economic equal- ity, Everlasting contradic- tion between, 7, 9-10, 57, 87. Liberty and property are social creations, 49. Liberty the watchword of individualisj^ democracy, 7 ; has liberty lost its charm ? 10-11 ; far more precious than equality, 57 ; leads to inequality, 86. Lincoln, Abraham, an immor- tal example of leadership and aristocracy of service, 19 ; as executive in the Civil War, 33 ; as a leader, 64. Lowell the poet of true democ- racy, 16. Lust for gain, Only cure for, 27-28. [108] / Madison, James, on dangers of legislative encroachment, 32-33. Manual labor a subordinate element in production, 26. Marat's theory of equality, 8-9. Maudsley on how little reason- ing men do, 53. Mazzini's definition of democ- racy, 6, 13. Mill, 55. Milton's definition of the good citizen, 50. Mob, The, versus the people, 24-26; surest antidote to, 29. Monopoly or privilege. Com- munity-given, 22. Morley, John, quoted, 63. New York, How a governor is nominated in, 93-94. Nineteenth century. Material progress in the, 81-82 ; scientific, 82 ; political de- velopment of democracy in, 83-85. Oligarchy, Only the shell of, left in Great Britain, 84. Parliament, Edmund Burke on what it is, 18. Parties, political. Origin of, 59 ; relation of citizen to, 60 ; effect on, of an inde- pendent vote, 62; need leaders, 63 ; value of party organizations, 65-69 ; easily abused, 66 ; define party policies, 67 ; extra-consti- tutional power of, 68 ; the Boss in, 68-69 ; business methods in, 69-70; indi- vidual responsibility for, JndeX 73 ; the good citizen in, 94-95. Party system. The, 59-60; independence of, 61 ; re- duces theoretical democ- racy to an oligarchy, 91. Peel, Sir Robert, on public opinion, 45. People's policies. The, and their executive agent, 37. Pericles on the Athenian citizen, 43. Political action the result of two forces, 44. Political agencies. Our three, 29. Political agents, extension of collective work through, 4. Political and economic exploi- tation, 20-22; how to be prevented, 23. Political conditions at begin- ning of twentieth century, 46-47. Political thought and action, New order of, 4. ^ Politics, The possible and the becoming in, 62-63 ; the one question never to be asked in, 70 ; held in low esteem, 93 ; the good citizen in, 94-95. Popular government possible only through political par- ties, 59. • President, The, and Supreme Court express the highest will of the whole people, 30, 33, 34 ; Congress invad- ing the province of, 30-31 ; responsible only to the peo- ple, 34 ; true democracy will protect, 35-36. [109] Index Private interest works in committee-rooms of legis- latures, 35. Problems of to-day chiefly "~ economic and social, 3. Property, Liberty and, social creations, 49. Property, private, Concept of, well-known, 23. Property, public. Definition of, needed, 23. "^ Public offices must be taken from control of the Boss, 69. Public opinion, Effective ex- pression of, 29 ; its place in a democracy, 44 ; force of, 45 ; Sir Robert Peel on, 45 ; a new creation, 45-46 ; dif- ficulty of directing, 46 ; relation of the individual to, 50, 58-59; genesis of, 52; how formed and changed, 54 ; uneven progress of, 55 ; influence of the party sys- tem on, 59 ; formation of, 73-75. Public policy. Irresponsibil- ity of the individual for, 94. Public privileges, Sale of, 69 ; must be stopped, 74. Public service. Efficient, the mark of civilization, 97. Questions, Economic and so- cial, more pressing than political, 3. Quo vadis? 79-81. Radicalism, The healthy, of a true democracy, 39. Reason, conscious. Propor- tion of, in the individual, 55 Reasoning, How little, men do, 53. Reforms, how set in motion 55-56. Representative, The real, 17- 18. Reverence and respect for law and authority. Decline of, 37-38. Rome, What is the lesson of, for America? 13. Roosevelt, Theodore, as execu- tive, 34. Sainte-Beuve's two classes of authors, 27. Salisbury, Lord, on socialism, 5. Scientific progress of the nine- teenth century, 82. Senate, The American, and its business methods, 99. Ship-money, John Hampden's, 50. Socialism, Lord Salisbury on, 5 ; its aim, 12-13. Socialist propaganda. The, 11-14; aims of, 12; unprac- tical programme of, 24. Socialistic democracy, Evil results of, 21, 22. Society, Wiio shall order? 49. Spoils system, Bad effects of the, 95-96 ; progress toward elimination of the, 96-97 ; diverts attention from prin- ciples to men, 98. State, The, and the individual citizen, 90. "State, The, we are it," 49. Statesmen and leaders, Two classes of, 27. Taine on characteristics of the mob, 24-25. [110] Teachers, Responsibility of, as citizens, 97, 100. Tendencies of institutions and ideas, 79-81. Thinking, Genuine, plays little part in our life, 52-53. Usurpation, Legislative, 31. Wealth of the United States, Jndcx If all the, were equally di- vided, 57. Wealth, The problem of, 27- 28. Welfare, Human, the main object of government, 4. [Ill] / / / This book is DUE on the last date stamped below/ $EK2& ti^ DECJ^ mi OCT 1 2 1931 APR 1 6 1943 " ISo/ APR i2 1933 my JAN 1 2 1934 dec/ 2 IP-^F- Form L-9-35m-8,'28 At4 61965 PM 9-10 '4^ tv itiii l«P^^ AUG 12 1950 Etc ^^^^ MAY 1 4 1953 MAY 2 2 1956 AUG 3 1^953 / / I u o = THIS BOOK card;;;;;; mill ^:^^t•LIBR.^RY6'/. ^(l/OJIIVDJO'^ mill c E o University Research Library ■0 -1 o ■o ,_a a