LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA PRESENTED BY MR. GEORGE COBB. DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM BY Walter Thomas Mills, M. A. AUTHOR OF "THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE' THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF SOCIAL ECONOMY BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY HILDA F. MILLS UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN February PREFACE This book has been written in an effort to show that if the world goes wrong with us, it is our own fault that it does so. If we do not like what the great private monopolies are doing, the way is clear to do ourselves what ought to be done instead. Practically everywhere there is liberty enough so that if the people would use the power they have they could speedily make an end of oppression, an end of needless poverty and a beginning of a healthful, normal, glad-hearted life for all. Everywhere the private interests are strong enough and bad enough so that, with a little more of inactivity on the part of the many, despotism will be everywhere enthroned "all of liberty will be lost." The mockery of the oppressor will be justified and the millions, for whom deliverance is now so easily in reach, will be once more enslaved. This is an effort to help in the struggle to make Democracy triumphant in all the institutions and activi- ties of all mankind. THE AUTHOR. Berkeley, California, January 15, 1916. DEDICATION THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF JEAN MAEXINE MILLS SHE NEVEE KNEW ONE THE INFEEIOE OF HEE- SELF. SHE NEVEE DEEAMED THAT ANYONE COULD BE BETTEE THAN SHE WAS. SHE WAS THE DEAEEST LITTLE DEMOCEAT HEE FATHEE EVEE KNEW, AND THE MOST LOYAL FEIEND AND HELPEE THAT EVEE TEIED TO MAKE HIS BUEDENS LIGHT. THE AUTHOE. AN APPRECIATION The years of travel, of service in the cause of good government, of special study and, finally, the putting of these conclusions into this form, were all impossible without the partnership and assistance, in this as in everything else, of my wife, HILDA F. MILLS. Further mention is gladly made of the late MR. H. W. BAIRD, of Cleveland, Ohio, and MR. C. C. TYLER, of Santa Cruz, California, both once students of mine and whose financial assistance and co-operation have been very sincerely appreciated. THE AUTHOR. THE OUTLINE CHAP. PART I j . STUDIES IN | 4. GOVERNMENT 5. ^ G. Why Have a Government? What the Government May Do. The Forms of Government. Industrial Democracy. The Elective Franchise. The Business Body Called the State. PART II CURRENT POLITICS 7. Political Parties. 8. Obstructive Forms of Party Organization. 0. Obstructive Forms of Government Procedure. 10. Militarism and Self-Government. PART III IMPROVED MACHINERY Universal Political Education. An Established Citizenship. A Share in the Government by All the Governed. Official Fidelity and Efficiency Enforced. The Industrial Organization of Political Parties. PART IV THE ORDER OF ADVANC* How to Proceed. What to Do. Constitutional Amendments. Public Industrial Enterprise. Industrial Representation. Democracy in World Politics. Forcing the Issue in Making the Start. PART V Suii MART 23. Summary and Conclusion. CONTENTS PAETI Studies in Government CHAPTER I WHY HAVE A GOVERNMENT The Control of Collective Interests The Control of Collective Activities Unanimous Consent Minority or Majority Rule Special Privileges and Minority Control Special Privileges and Despotism Special Privileges Result of Military or Economic Achievement Inherited Privilege Majority Rule and Special Privileges Abuse of Majority Rule The Correction of Abuses Under Majority Rule Schemes of Advance Without the State The Elective Franchise and Modern Progress New Achievements Necessary to Democracy. CHAPTER II WHAT THE GOVERNMENT MAY DO The Functions of the State Collective Action and Government The Family Corporations Partnerships Churches Banks All Governed Somehow The State, the Army, the Navy, the Workshop Corporation Control and the Government Modern Industry and the State The Individual and Collective Government Activities and Responsibilities. CHAPTER III THE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT Majority Rule and the Common Good What Is a Law The Des- potic and Democratic Notions of Law The Rise of Militarism and the Beginning of Despotism 'The Russian Model The Industrial Boss Rule by Appointment of Special Privilege Control from Top Down Or from Bottom Up The Seat of Authority Industrial and Political Despotism or Democracy The Making of Both Sides of a Bargain Washington or Wall Street Which Rules How [ix] CHAPTER IV INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY The Menace of Democracy Will It Lessen Production The Unemployed Under Industrial Democracy The Unskilled Workers Managerial Ability The Appointed Boss of the Absent Owner Wastefulness of Slave Labor The Wreckage of Our Work The Interested Workers The Better Products Race Degeneracy and Despotism Private Profit and the Public Good Child Life and In- dustrial Despotism Idleness and Disease Under Industrial Democ- racy Will Democracy Corrupt the State The Cause of Political Corruption Industrial Monopoly and Despotic Mastery The Poli- ticians, the Millionaires and the Purchasable Voters Voting in the Industries An Interested and an Enlightened Vote When "Voting on the Job" The Industrial Foundation of Political Democracy. CHAPTER V THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE The Meaning of the Ballot Older Than Written History Primi- tive Democracy Unanimous Consent The Elections of Moses Of the Barbarian Villages War Came and the Ballot Was Lost The Battle for Its Restitution (Mediaeval Elections The Swiss Cantons The Modern Elective Franchise The Beginning in America Few Men Voters Universal Franchise West of the A lleghenies Plural Voting Woman's Vote Why the Ballot The Ballot or the Bayonet. CHAPTEE VI THE BUSINESS BODY CALLED THE STATE The Business of the State Providing for the General Welfare Shareholding Companies Elections Are Shareholders' Meetings Sound Business Principles Partisan Votes in a Business Body Efficiency and Responsibility Alone Considered Shareholders' Right to Vote Sex, Race, or Education Poll Taxes 'Bad Business Buying from Another What One Can More Cheaply Produce Business Despotism and Social Democracy. PAET II Current Politics CHAPTER VII POLITICAL PARTIES Why a Political Party Old Questions and New Issues Any Ad- vance and the Corresponding Adjustment Sordid Interests and Social Conflicts Collective Ballots Small Communities and Polit- ical Parties The Ancient Parties The Political Party and Civil War Old Party Survivals The Greatest Political Problem The Party as an Instrument of Progress. w CONTENTS CHAPTEE VIII OBSTRUCTIVE FORMS OF PARTY ORGANIZATION The First Step In Social Service The Caucus The Primary The Convention Its Disorders .Alliances Betrayals Not Deliberative Bodies Party Rules Party Platforms Party Candidates Party Committees Great Private Interests and Party Committees Immediate Results Money in Politics Confusion Planned For Bi-Partisan Machines Election Frauds Misleading Campaigns. CHAPTER IX OBSTRUCTIVE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT PROCEDURE Majority Rule Statesmen and Agitators The Desirable and the Possible Constitutions Everywhere Obstructive Hereditary Author- ities -Checks'' in a Self-Governing State The Power of the President The Veto The Uncounted Minorities The Two Houses The Standing Committees The Obstructive Power of the Senate The Senate Majority Resting on 14,000,000 people Out of 100,- 000 000 Population The Supreme Court Its Life Tenure of Office Its Abrogation of the Acts of Congress The Supremacy of the Treaties The Great Private Interests in International Affairs Constitutional Amendments Obstructive Processes to Defeat the Public Will The President and Congress Governing the Country Four Months After Their Repudiation by the People. CHAPTEE X MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT The Exigencies of Battle and the Ballot Old Powers Control in War International Authorities Purely Despotic The Coming of War The End of Democracy The Beginning of Despotism Of the Monopoly of Land Of Chattel Slavery Of the Subjection of Woman Of the Class Struggle Military Efficiency and Democracy Impos- sible Industrial Despotism and the Revival of Militarism War and Industrial Despotism The End of Industrial Despotism The End of War The Causes of War End with the Coming of Indus- trial Democracy. PART III Improved Machinery CHAPTEE XI UNIVERSAL POLITICAL EDUCATION The Danger of an Ignorant Vote Despotism and Ignorance The Limitations of the Schools No Instruction on Current Problems Government and University Bulletins Reporting Special Investiga- tions University Bureaus of Legislation Giving Both Sides a Hearing State Pamphlets in Referendum Elections Permanent [Xi] CONTENTS Educational Periodical to All Voters With Accurate Information in Reply to All Inquiries on Political Matters on Disputed Topics The Special Work of the University Regular Space Given Any Topic on Petition as in a Referendum Candidates Could Not Dodge New Questions Could Not Be Submitted Without Previous Dis- cussion Political Platforms Would Be the Product of All the People Legislatures Politicians Campaign Committees Unable to Ignore or to Mislead Conventions Would Lose Power for Evil Public Control Through an Ignorant Vote Thus Made Impossible. CHAPTER XII AN ESTABLISHED CITIZENSHIP Systems of Registration Compare the Records of Real Estate Titles Membership in a Church, Fraternity or Labor Union Regis- tration of Citizenship "Once For All" Certificates of Citizenship Like Shares of Stock in Any Other Business Transfer Any Time Falsification Voting the Absent and the Dead Made Impossible Once a Citizen Always One No Loss of Franchise or Loss of Resi- dence Citizens' Rights Established in Guaranteed Employment Share of Social Income in the Industrial Commonwealth. CHAPTER Xm A SHARE IN THE GOVERNMENT BY ALL THE GOVERNED The Tribesman's Vote A Parliamentary Body The Right to Matte Motions as Well as to Vote on Them The Obstructive De- vices The Initiative and Referendum Obstructive Policy Vicious Legislation Power of the Machine Mixing of Measures or of Measures and Candidates Impossible Urgency Defined Limited and Still Subject to Repeal by Referendum Referendum Law Amended Only by Referendum Preliminary Study Initiating a New Party as Well as a New Law. CHAPTER XIV OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY ENFORCED The Nomination of Candidates By a Convention By a Refer- endum by a Primary By a Non-Partisan Petition Voting by a Plurality By a Malorlty with Second Elections By Preferential Voting Proportional Representation Voting by Ballot By the Voting Machine The Control of Public Officials By a Party Com- mittee By a Party Referendum By the Public Recall The Short Ballot and Fixed Responsibility. CHAPTER XV THE INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION OF POLITICAL PARTIES Great Private Interests in Control of Parties Through Commit- tees The Industrial Groups of the Masters The Fight for Local Self-Government Why Business Organizations Labor Unions Government Departments All Act Along the Line of the Great [Xii] CONTENTS Industries The Vital Connections of Individuals with the Occupa- tions Of Occupations with the Nation Registration by Occupa- tions Industrial Representation in the State Party Committees Chosen by Industrial Groups The Public Powers and the Occupa- tional Groups Industrial Groups to Succeed Industrial Despots in the Mastery of the State Industrial Democracy. PART IV The Order of Advance CHAPTEE XVI HOW TO PROCEED Study Valueless Except for Action Collective Interests Muni- cipal State National International Easiest First Fundamenta 1 Causes Same Everywhere Most of Democracy No Democracy Following a Great Question From Smallest and Easiest Field to Largest and Hardest The First Battle The Last War. CHAPTER XVII WHAT TO DO Propaganda First Voluntary Association Free Distribution of Periodical Literature Discussing Both Sides Meetings Debating Clubs Organize by Industrial Groups Reach the Useful People Through the Industries in Which They Are Useful Smallest Begin- nings Winning the World. CHAPTER XVIII CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS The Initiative, the Referendum, the Recall Guarding These Measures Removing All Limitations on the State The Right of the State or of Any Political Subdivision of the State to Engage in Any Industry The Life Tenure of the Judges The Powers of the Court The Upper House Universal Suffrage. CHAPTER XIX PUBLICLY OWNED INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES Private Monopolies and Despotism First Those Whose Robberies Are Most Evident The Most Unpopular Explosives Poisons Opiates Narcotics Intoxicants The Worst of the Trusts Enter- prises Which Promise Great Benefits Ground Rents and Home Building The Money Trust and Farm Loans Public Enterprise and the Unemployed. [xiii] CONTENTS CHAPTEE XX INDUSTRIAL REPRESENTATION Assets and Liabilities Crooked National Bookkeeping A Forced Balance Honest "Publicity" Private Control Ends with the End of Private Ownership Government Ownership with Democratic Control of the Government Industrial Democracy The Credit and the Debit Side of the Accounts of the Useful People and of the Stnto An Honest Balance Industrial Enterprise in a Democratic State Makes Necessary Industrial Representation in the State Thus Ends Despotism. CHAPTEE XXI DEMOCRACY IN WORLD POLITICS World Peace Through Pear Military Mastery "Preparedness" for Destruction The End Destruction Insanity and Robbery A World Congress International War Can Come Only While Interna- tional Plunder Lasts International Interests of Miners Transport Workers Manufacturers All Producers Industrial Democracy Industrial Representation in the State of the International Indus- tries The Beginning of International Democracy The Dominant Interest Then to Raise the Standards of Living in All Countries War Becomes Impossible as Democracy Becomes Triumphant. CHAPTEE XXII FORCING THE ISSUE Fundamental Changes Subject to Constitutional or Hereditary Powers Is a Violent Revolution Necessary? Even Hereditary Powers Can Continue Only with Continued Consent The Right of Petition Majorities Need Not Petition They Command The Con- sent of the Governed The First Battle A Pledge Petition Reach- Ing Those Already Elected A Pledge with Teeth A "Petition with Boots On" A Hard Battle War to the Death No Price Too Great for Free Institutions. PART V CHAPTEE A Summary and the Conclusion The State Is Necessary Special Privileged Minority or Majority Rule Despotism or Democracy In Industry and Commerce The Shareholder's Rights in the Business Body Called the State Polit- ical Parties and Economic Conflicts Their Corrupt Control by Big Interests Their Just Control by the Industrial Groups Universal Political Education Constant and Efficient Control of the Public Servant A Practical Program Constitutional Amendments Pub- licly Owned Industries International Industrial Solidarity and World Peace Forcing the Issue A World Democracy. Q [xiv] PART I STUDIES IN GOVERNMENT DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM CHAPTER I WHY HAVE A GOVERNMENT? Governments do not primarily exist to en- able a part of the people to exercise authority over the rest of the people. Governments do not primarily exist to en- able all of the people together to exercise authority over each one of the people individu- ally. Governments are necessary and their exist- ence is justified because there are things which must be used, if life is to be maintained, and which are of such a nature that they cannot be used individually but must be used, if they are used at all, by groups of people acting together. Such things, and the processes of using such things, must be controlled or managed, that is, governed in some way. [1] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM If any individual be given the power of fixed and lasting mastery over things so col- lectively used, that makes necessary the servi- tude of all others who join in their use. If any group of individuals, to the exclusion of all others, be given together the fixed and lasting mastery over things so collectively used, that still makes necessary the servitude of all others who must use these things but are not admitted into the governing group. These things and the use of these things so collectively used must be governed in some way. There are only three ways possible. They must be governed by a minority of those interested, or by a majority of those interested, or by unanimous agreement. If nothing is to be done with the things used together, as long as any one objects, then, as there will always be someone to object, nothing can be done at all. If any share of those concerned, less than the majority, is to control such things and the use of such things, that control cannot be established as a fixed and lasting condition, in any community, except as the result of special WHY HAVE A GOVERNMENT? privileges of some sort. But it is impossible to confer special privileges of any sort on any- one without at the same time enforcing corre- sponding disadvantages on all the rest. Special privileges may be the result of military adventure and, once established by force, they may be handed down by inherit- ance. Special privileges may be secured by eco- nomic achievement, thus securing to the few the control of the means by which the many live, and so an indirect but most effective pub- lic power is obtained in the community, and this power once secured by social services, by good fortune, by speculation, by "graft" or fraud, may also be handed down by inherit- ance. In any case, the power of the minority to control in the mastery of things in which they are concerned can be established in the first place, or be perpetuated afterwards, only by special privileges, granted to the few which al- ways means that just and equal opportunities are thereby taken from the many. If special privilege is not to exist, then ma- jority rule is the only effective method for DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM the government of those things which the people must use or do together. It is claimed that the majority may oppress the minority and that, as a matter of fact, the people who are just and intelligent are always in the minority, but the trouble is that those who make up the minority, who are just and intelligent people, are rarely, if ever, the same people as those holding special privileges, and hence, who make up the ruling minority. If it should ever happen that the people having special privileges should also be the most intelligent and the most just, still their power to rule would not depend upon their sense of justice or their superior intelligence, but upon their special privileges. And that power to rule, resting on special privileges, could be enforced when both justice and intel- ligence are lacking or when the poison of self- interest has misled intelligence and has blinded justice. Hence, it may be said that the experience of mankind justifies the conclusion that minority control of collective interests, based as it must be, on special privileges, can lead only to the [4] WHY HAVE A GOVERNMENT? use of the public power in behalf of the few who possess that power and to the measureless loss of the many who are voiceless. It is admitted that the majority is not al- ways just or intelligent, but majority rule need not rest upon special privileges of any sort. Majority rule does not depend on a majority made up of any fixed and lasting portion of the people. Under majority rule with no special privi- leges, inherited or achieved, derived from either military adventure; or from economic enterprise, under such majority rule, those who are in the majority today may be in the minority tomorrow. Those in the minority at any time, by education, by agitation and by organization, may make themselves the major- ity, if their cause can be made to seem to be both wise and just. Those who are in the majority, having no political or economic privileges which others do not enjoy, can keep the majority in the control of collective concerns only by appeal- ing to the just and wise. Under such an administration of the public [5] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM power, that which is unjust and unwise may frequently prevail, but only because it has been mistaken for the just and wise, and, hence, it can continue to prevail only so long as it can make effective the disguises under which it has come to power. To govern by unanimous agreement the things collectively used is impracticable. The government of things collectively used by a minority can be established or continued only by the power of special privileges, and the existence and dominance of these special privi- leges make a just and wise administration of collective interests absolutely impossible. Majority rule of the things collectively used may be found to be not without frequent and disastrous failures, but under majority rule the way is easiest to correct wrongs, to retrieve misfortunes, to reform abuses and, in the end, to secure the common good. Under majority rule, all these can be done without unearned advantage for the few, and without undeserved misfortune for the many. Because majority rule is so much more direct and effective than any other possible [6] WHY HAVE A GOVERNMENT? method of administering collective interests, it must stand as the best method that can be suggested in a matter where some method must prevail. Majority rule must stand so long as there are things which must be used, or carried on, together. Among the things so used, or carried on, together, are all of the great industrial and social services on which the existence of mankind depends. The current abuses of majority rule are not to be denied. The elective franchise is not uni- versal. The methods of organization are always clumsy and sometimes infamous. The ballot is permitted to apply only to unimpor- tant collective interests. The things which peo- ple know nothing about they vote about, and the things which they know all about they are not permitted to vote about. Things which concern them only in the remotest way they vote about, and things which affect them in a most direct and vital manner they are not per- mitted to vote about. Misinformation before elections, intimidation and falsifying of re- turns at elections and the betrayal of trusts after elections are admitted. [7] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It is even insisted that society must escape from these abuses or popular self-government cannot long abide, and, further, it is both ad- mitted and insisted that real majority rule is impossible so long as special economic advan- tages or hereditary special privileges are held by the few as related to the many. And it is admitted that this is true under all established governments, and everywhere. But even this is not a sufficient reason for the abandonment of majority rule and the voluntary return to other forms of govern- ment, for the admitted abuses under majority rule become the fixed and established order of things under any other form of government which it is possible to suggest. All schemes which seek for social progress without the ballot and with no dependence on majority rule are only proposals to revert to the older, cruder, and outgrown methods of collective action which had been on trial ten thousand years before the modern elective franchise became a method of government and an instrument of progress. The more rational program is to fight for [8] WHY HAVE A GOVERNMENT? majority rule wherever it does not exist and to use to the uttermost the power of majority rule wherever it does exist, or to whatever extent it may exist for the following purposes : 1. To extend the franchise until all who are concerned in any matter shall be heard in all matters which concern them. 2. To simplify and perfect the machinery by the use of which it is sought to make both just and effective the public will. 3. To relate all voters to the ballot box and to their most vital collective interests in such a way that both men and women everywhere will vote about the things they know about and in which they are most vitally concerned. 4. On the one hand, to make impossible the existence of such political parties as may exist, not for the settlement of questions of public controversy, but which take advantage of all such controversies to further their own exist- ence and to increase the power of those in con- trol, and, on the other hand, to promote and to protect the existence and the activities of all political parties which seek to render rational service in the consideration and settlement of questions of serious public controversy. [9] 5. To make the majority vote the only su- preme authority beyond which there can be no appeal, and to which appeal may always be made, each issue on its own merits separate from all other measures and apart from the personal fortunes or ambitions of any person or persons whatsoever. 6. To relate the public official to the con- stituency which he serves in such a way that at any time the people may remove a faithless official without being compelled to abandon measures of public importance or other officials whose character and services are above reproach. 7. To abolish the last vestige of special priv- ilege of any sort which may give to anyone personal power over any other, and, hence, to relate the responsibilities imposed upon every- one to the opportunities afforded him, in such a way that personal achievements and personal failures shall be solely because ,of personal character and personal conduct, and not be- cause of social favoritism or social wrongs. Without waiting for the triumph of new political parties or the destruction or abandon- [10] WHY HAVE A GOVERNMENT? ment of old ones, can the power of the major- ity be so used as to compel such changes in the machinery of the government? To answer this question is the purpose of the following pages. [11] CHAPTER II WHAT MAY THE GOVERNMENT Do? It is frequently contended that some cer- tain political proposal may be desirable enough so far as the proposal goes but that it does not properly come within the functions of the state. Let it be borne in mind that the govern- ment exists only because of collective interests. Then we can proceed with the inquiry as to what particular collective interests the govern- ment may concern itself. It is perfectly evident that wherever there are collective interests of any sort there must be government of some sort. Families are made up of groups of people. In the families there must be some control of the collective interests. That control consti- tutes family government. Family government does not exist apart from the state and with- out regard to the larger collective interests in WHAT MAY THE GOVERNMENT DO? which any particular family is involved in common with all other families. The government fixes the status of the fam- ily. The ownership and management of its collective properties, the control of the chil- dren, the mutual interests of all in the proper- ties, earnings and behavior of each, are fixed, and may be enforced under the law. If the husband whips the wife and the law holds that this is permissible and protects the husband in doing so, as was the case recently in a certain court, then the husband is thereby made a pub- lic officer and the government assumes respon- sibility for that sort of family government. No man can escape his responsibility for such an act on the ground that he himself does not whip his own wife. He is himself responsible for wife whipping so long as the government of which he is a part authorizes the doing of such a thing. Partnerships, corporations, and all commer- cial organizations involve collective interests, and these collective interests are controlled, that is, governed, under laws fixing the rights both of property and of persons to the minut- [13] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM est detail and the rules, officers and agents of these partnerships, corporations and commer- cial bodies are the rules, officers, or agents of the government and, acting under the govern- ment's authority and protection, whatever these officers do in these matters of collective concern, they do, not only as the agents of those who are in those bodies, but as the repre- sentatives or officers of the whole body of society. Their activities are government activities. If their actions are wrong, then those larger col- lective bodies, including all partnerships, cor- porations, commercial bodies, and all other organizations of men, are bound to bear the responsibility for such wrong doing. They are not bodies of men existing independently of the government, they are a part of the government machinery. Their usages, rules, services, and robberies are all a part of the government. It is not true that the government has and ought to have nothing to do with such organizations. Even as they are now organized, they are gov- ernment agencies, and the government is now responsible for their activities. It is not a question whether there should be government [14] WHAT MAY THE GOVERNMENT DO? activity in such matters. The government is already active. It is only a question whether what the government does now in these mat- ters is the wisest thing to do. The government now interferes to enforce their rules, to protect their enterprises, to col- lect their debts, to defend them from trespass, and whatever they do, they do with the pub- lic courts, the public jails and the public guns forever at their backs. Again, it is not a question whether the gov- ernment is to be withheld from activity in enterprises of this sort. It is already active. It is only a question whether what it is doing is the best thing that can be done under the circumstances. Churches are made up of groups of people. Like all other groups, those who are in them are related to each other in a way which gives them special collective interests which together they will manage in their own way. But even churches have both social obligations and social benefits as related to the use of the public power. It is not true in America, nor any- where else, that there is entire separation of [15] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM church and state. Properties held by the churches are held under titles created under public laws, they are exempt from taxes under the public laws, they enforce their discipline with the consent and under the authority of the state. It is not true that they have no connection with the state. Their ministers are given cer- tain public duties in connection with the birth, naming and marriage of the living, and in the burial of the dead. They are not independent from the state. The state guarantees to the churches and to those who are in the churches that those not concerned in the affairs of any particular church shall not interfere with those matters which do not concern them. It should do the same for any other sort of an organization of any kind whatsoever. But no state will allow any church, or the members of any church, under pretense of re- ligious liberty, to do the things which the crim- inal law forbids, or to do any of those things which are in admitted violation of the common good. Regardless of the pleadings of any church, polygamy is forbidden. Regardless of [16] WHAT MAY THE GOVERNMENT DO? the pleadings of any church, inhuman sacri- fices and immoral ceremonies are, and ought to be, forbidden. When the holy water was found to have six million typhoid germs to the cubic inch, the church was required to make sanitary by the use of carbolic acid that which was already holy by the blessings of the church. The churches may have their private schools. Why not ? But if the law authorizes and pro- tects them, they become public schools serving a public function under the provisions of the public law, and should it ever happen that from the students of any particular private school an unusual percentage of students should show up in the penitentiary, then the whole body of society could not dismiss its responsibility because any particular church or other voluntary organization was the owner of such a school. In the same way, farmers' or- ganizations, labor unions and fraternal soci- eties all exist, if they exist at all as lawful bodies, because those whose collective interests are involved are in that way able to have their collective interests promoted and protected in some lawful manner. DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It is not a question wKether the government shall interfere. All these groups must have government of some sort, and that smaller gov- ernment in any such collective interest of the few cannot exist except as a part of the organic activities which together make up organized society, for government is simply that whole body of those organized activities which to- gether constitute the means and methods by which collective interests are provided for. Bank cashiers, grocery clerks, delivery men, priests, teachers, lodge secretaries, walking delegates, physicians, attorneys and under- takers are each of them men of authority in the places which create for them their responsi- bilities and are, in fact, agents and officers of the law. The great public questions of the hour in- volve government problems, not so much in regard to the officers of the army and navy, the post-office or the penitentiary, as in regard to the government of corporations, manufactur- ing enterprises, the work of the banks, the importers, and to all business activities and relations of every imaginable variety. [18] WHAT MAY THE GOVERNMENT DO? Once the central governments were entirely military. Then industry was of importance only as related to the army's commissary; but now the great governments are becoming great industrial bodies. The old government was modeled after the military camp; the modern government is more and more adopting the forms of industrial activity. Now the army exists mainly for use in capturing markets and breaking strikes. The head of the old government was selected because of his capacity as a soldier; the heads of the new governments are selected, pro- moted, or removed as they prove capable or incapable in promoting the commercial or industrial interests of the people. Formerly the state was only known through the interference of the army with the interests of industry or commerce. Then it was said "That government is best which governs (interferes) least." Now the prevailing notion of the government is the promotion of education, of sanitation, of industry, railways, canals, irrigation ditches, and the reclamation of waste lands. That government is not best which accom- [19] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM plishes most in war but which achieves most for the regular employment of labor, the de- velopment of industries, the coming and the staying of prosperity. Regarding such tasks, no government would be held to be the best that would do the least. Government reform which seeks to save the government five cents on the one hundred pounds of sugar at the custom-house, and per- mits the sugar trust to continue to take five cents on each single pound of sugar used, has not reached the real government problem, and will not until it reaches the plants and proc- esses by which sugar is made and carried to the consumer. Government reform which seeks to prevent a combination of great corporations but per- mits the corporations to control the industries on behalf of the holders of stocks, both un- earned and water-logged, ( instead of in the interest of the tens of thousands who are em- ployed in such industries and the millions in related industries, all of whom are robbed both in the making of the goods and in completing the processes of production in the markets [20] WHAT MAY THE GOVERNMENT DO? where exchanges are made, such government reform entirely ignores the most serious tasks which the government should undertake. It is not a question whether the government should interfere in any of these matters; the principal activities of the government are now the promotion of private interests in these very matters. The government cannot continue to do the wrong thing under the pretense that it would be wrong to do anything at all. Any study of government, or of proposals for its improvement, must not ignore this greatest task of improving the government of the industries where the millions are employed, where laws are "boss-made" laws and, when once made, are ruthlessly enforced by the courts and bayonets of the government. It is said the government exists only to pro- tect, and this is made to mean the protection of private interests as against the invasion of others. It is true that this was the excuse for the existence of the old governments which were almost entirely military organizations. When they had impoverished a country by ex- acting support for their armies, they explained that this was necessary in order to protect the impoverished people from having some other army from some other country do the same thing. But now the government does not justify its existence on the score of limiting its activities to keeping the other armies out of the country. Its claim to power rests on its ability to develop the country. It irrigates land. The water must be used in common. The government says that those who use the water together ought to own it together and manage it to- gether. The use of the government land under the government ditch can be obtained on no other terms. Water power, electric lights, electric roads, cooperative stores, collective sell- ing agencies and branch railways are all fol- lowing the line of the government's irrigated land policy. Modern industry has filled the world with industrial equipments which, like irrigation ditches, must be used collectively. The mod- ern state provides a method now for the mis- government of the great collective interests of those who collectively use the great collective industries. The government is already in the [22] WHAT MAY THE GOVERNMENT DO? midst of these responsibilities. Its principal duty is no longer that of protection in time of war; it is as an administrator of collective interests in time of peace as well as war. Under what limitations shall the govern- ment be placed? Personal matters become matters of public concern only when they come seriously to affect collective interests. Collective interests must be governed in some way. The government must deal with all such matters. It does so now. If the collectivity is only a portion of the people engaged in matters which do not concern the rest, then let them alone. It is their affair. Let them collectively govern their collective affairs in any way most satisfactory to those who are in that collectivity, but that would not be the abandonment of government or the exclusion of government, but only a method of government. In the same way, when any matter seriously and collectively concerns all the people, no matter what the nature of that thing, then all the people must in some way assume responsi- bility for the thing which so concerns them all, [23] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM and when they do so, that too is government action, not of a different kind, but only on a larger scale. In either case it is government action whether the immediate agent of doing the thing agreed to be done is a soldier or a court officer or a bank clerk or a farmer or a miner or a blacksmith. The government is responsible for what it does and for what it permits to be done under its protection. The only limit to its activities must always be the boundary line of its responsibilities. [24] CHAPTER III THE FORMS or GOVERNMENT It has been seen that majority rule alone is just, wise and capable. It has been seen that governments must deal with all matters of collective concern and that the greatest collective interests are found in the industries. There are many who admit the wisdom of self-government in governments which do lit- tle, and, therefore, can do little harm even though they do that little badly. But self- government in the industries. Majority rule in the factories. It is said no one could seri- ously propose anything of the sort. There are many forms of government but fundamentally there are only two forms of government possible in factories or anywhere else. It has been seen that all government authority must rest with the majority vote or [25] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM on special privilege. The one is a democracy and the other, a despotism. Mr. Blackstone in his "Commentaries on English Law," says that "a law is a rule of action prescribed by a superior for the govern- ment of an inferior," but in this country, and in all other countries, for a hundred years an- other conception of law has been struggling for a hearing. It is that a law is not a rule pre- scribed by an admitted superior for the gov- ernment of an admitted inferior. It is that "a law is a mutual agreement between those who have interests in common, determining what shall be done with regard to those interests." The claim that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is, from the participation of the governed in the government, makes a law under such a government a mutual agreement between per- sons having equal rights as contracting parties, not a command from a master to a servant. The one of these ideas of law is despotic ; the other is democratic. Formerly, and ever since civilization began, all governments were despotic. All progress [26] THE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT has been towards democracy and away from despotism. Now the great political contro- versies are everywhere related to this conflict between despotism and democracy. They are fighting each other to the death. They cannot both be victorious. No final compromise is possible. In America, democracy has won a limited victory in a limited notion of the functions of government, but in America, as everywhere else industrial despotism still prevails. Get clearly in mind the fundamental differ- ences between despotism and democracy. It is admitted that the government of Russia is despotic. What is the thing which is in Russia and just, because that thing is in Russia, Rus- sia must be a despotism a thing which, were it found anywhere else, there too would be a despotism? It is this : In Russia the smallest group of people having interests in common always has its chief man and he is appointed by someone who is above him, who is appointed by someone who is above him, and the last highest appoint- ment in this series of appointments is made [27] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM by the Czar. But the Czar is not appointed at all. He is just born to the supreme mastery without being answerable to anyone above him. He rules by appointment. He appoints the man next below himself, who appoints the man below him, until the last lowest in this series of appointments rules those who are at the bot- tom, and those at the bottom are never ap- pointed at all. Just as the Czar was born to mastery at the top, so they were born to servi- tude at the bottom. That is a despotism. A despotism rules by appointment from the top down. Under a despotism every man above is the master of all the men below. Under a despotism all the men below are the helpless servants of all the men above. Under a despotism the men above rule all the men below for the benefit of those above and to the injury of those below. Wherever this is done, there is a despotism. Under a democracy all this is reversed. Under a democracy the smallest group of peo- ple having interests together has also its chief man, but he is elected by the men below him. The next above is also elected by those below, [28] THE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT until the last man above has been elected by all below, and those below reserve the same power to take one down when they do not want him up, as they had to put him up when they wanted him there. A despotism rules by appointment from the top down. A democracy rules by election from the bottom up. Under a despotism everyone below is the helpless servant, ruled and robbed by everyone above. Under a democracy those below are neither servants nor masters, except as they are masters of the things they jointly use or jointly do. Under a despotism everyone above is a master of all the men below, fixed and irremovable; but under a democrac}^, the men above are not masters in the sense that they can exploit or rob or abuse those who are below, nor are they servants in the sense that they cannot escape from their positions of service. They are the voluntary servants of the public good. They can quit their tasks if they do not like them, but they cannot use their positions to exploit, nor can they be compelled as public servants to submit to extortion or oppression at the hands of others. Under a despotism the man above secures [29] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM appointment because he will serve the man above himself and at the expense of all below. But under a democracy the man above comes to his place by promotion as a mark of confi- dence, as a reward of merit, and under condi- tions under which he can hold his place only so long as he proves himself continually worthy of that confidence of those below which was in the first place the cause of his promotion. Under a despotism the greatest man of all is the greatest master of all ; but under a democ- racy the ideal greatness of the Nazarene will at last be realized. Then the greatest of all will be the free, glad "servant of all." He will be the greatest of all because he will have ren- dered the greatest service of all and unto all. It is under this system of rule by appoint- ment from the top down that the Czar rules Russia. It is that which makes Russia a des- potism. It is by this same system of rule by appointment from the top down, that the mines, railways, and all the great monopolized industries are ruled, not only in Russia but everywhere else on all the earth. These are industrial despotisms. Here, as in Russia, the [30] THE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT collective interests of all are sacrificed to the personal advantage of the masters who rule, by appointment, for the benefit of those above and to the injury of those below. Shall we say that in this country we have a politician's democracy and a workingman's des- potism? It is explained that the Czar is born to his place of mastery, while the American industrial master achieves his place of power. The first of the Czars achieved his place of mastery. Only figureheads among the Czars come to their places by the accident of birth. So, in this country, the first of the millionaires, in any family of millionaires, comes to his place of power by achievement. The figureheads among the millionaires who follow them also inherit industrial mastery. The few are born to industrial mastery. That means that the many are born to industrial servitude. All crowns are valuable only because of the mas- tery which they give, and this is as true of the crowns carried in the pockets of the million- aires as of the crowns on the heads of kings and kaisers. It has been said that the essence of tyranny is in the power to make both sides of a bargain. [31] In all the great industries of America, the speculators, masters by inheritance or by fraud, are struggling, with all the power their des- potic organizations of industry have jgiven them, to make both sides of every bargain. Under American political democracy, the worker may vote once in four years, but under American industrial despotism, the worker has no vote through all the years of his voiceless service. The political democracy with its headquar- ters at Washington maintains the post-office and the army and navy. It does a few other things. It is all the time doing more things. Industrial despotism with its headquarters in New York and its branches everywhere con- trols all the great monopolized industries in which the millions are employed. The indus- tries not so monopolized depend for services, in such a way, on the industries which are monopolized that these central industrial mon- opolies can, and do, fix the prices on all the products of labor. They fix the price of labor for all the mil- lions employed by these monopolized indus- [32] tries and the price on all products and services in all industries not so monopolized. It is in this way that the whole industrial and commer- cial life of America falls under the control, that is, under the government, of industrial despotism. It is because the industrial monopolies can fix the price which the worker gets, in the proc- ess of production, and can also fix the price which the worker pays in purchasing back his own products from the markets that the mas- ters of these industrial monoplies are able to have unearned millions in their hands and leave both penniless and helpless the workers by whose industry alone these millions are created. It is because of this power of the industrial monopolies to control both ends of the proc- esses of making and of exchanging products that so frequently an advance in nominal wages at the one end of the transaction, fol- lowed by an advance in the cost of living at the other end, makes the purchasing power of the wages nominally increased, really less than be- fore the advance was made. It is this ability to make both sides of the bargain which makes [33] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM the tyranny of industrial despotism complete and unendurable. Lincoln said, "This country cannot long en- dure part slave territory and part free soil." So may it be said that this country cannot long endure a political democracy and an industrial despotism, both at the same time. Either the democracy which the people have sought for, cherished and defended will be extended to all collective interests, including the things which the people use together in the earning of a living, either that, or else industrial despotism will continue to extend its power until "all of liberty is lost." It is frequently admitted that ultimately either Washington must give orders to Wall Street or Wall Street will give orders to Wash- ington. In fact, it is more than intimated that Wall Street is already the master of all the departments and services of the government at Washington, and even now uses these gov- ernment powers to further the interests of this industrial despotism. Even when this admission is made, it is still asserted that, bad as this is, industrial democ- [34] THE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT racy would be even worse ; and having assumed this without giving any reason, it is at once affirmed that the advocates of industrial de- mocracy are "anarchists," "traitors," "men de- void of patriotism," "mischief makers," "enemies of the flag" and "unfit for citizen- ship." And this is the industrial despot's only answer to democracy. It is a deliberate effort to create needless social hysteria and to win a bad case by a persistent use of invective and of personal bitterness. How groundless are these fears of social disaster under industrial democracy will be shown in the following chapter. [35] CHAPTER IV INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY If industrial democracy really is to injure society, as claimed above, it must do so in some one of several ways. If it would make the products of labor less or the goods produced of inferior quality, that would be a misfortune. If it would lower the levels of physical strength or mental power among the people, and so lead to race degen- eracy, that would be a misfortune. If it would corrupt the state and so bring on political con- ditions more unendurable than those which even now are not to be endured, that would be a misfortune. If industrial democracy could injure society in none of these ways, even the most fright- ened imagination among all the defenders of the industrial despots would be unable to dis- cover any other way by which harm would come to society through making an end of [36] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY industrial despotism and a beginning of indus- trial democracy. Let us soberly consider how groundless are these fears. First. Will the coming of industrial democ- racy make the products of labor less? Now, millions of men and women are irregu- larly employed or are altogether unemployed, and the industrial despots cannot employ them. The industrial despots cannot employ them be- cause they cannot secure a stable, constant, sufficient market in which to sell the products. They cannot sell the products because the workers cannot buy with their wages what they can produce with their labor. This is true because private monopolies pri- vately appropriate ground rents, privately en- force and appropriate extortionate charges for the private use of the public credit and pri- vately fix and privately appropriate enormous sums in profits or dividends for which there is given in return not even a pretense of service. Industrial democracy cannot possibly be es- tablished while these private monopolies re- main. When the government, acting in behalf [37] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM of all, appropriates ground rents which are the gift of nature or the product of the whole body of society, when the government, acting in be- half of all, provides for the private use of all public credit at the cost of keeping the ac- counts and making good the losses, when the government, acting in behalf of all, takes over the great industrial monopolies and makes an end of unearned dividends, then the only re- maining claimant against the products of labor will be labor itself. Then wages must rise and prices fall until labor can buy its own total product. Hence, industrial democracy will at once make one's power in the purchase of products balance against his power to produce. That will make a never-failing market. Then all labor can be regularly employed. That will make a larger product for a larger market. Now most labor is unskilled labor. No man- ufacturer will share the secrets of his trade. No worker wants to multiply the competitors for his job. Industrial democracy will change all this. The skill, the secrets, the tricks and knacks of effective production, when made [38] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY available for all, will increase the products of all, not with resulting loss of employment or of threatened bankruptcy for any, but with in- creasing prosperity for all. All labor will tend strongly to become skilled labor. Skilled labor produces more than unskilled labor, and that will make a larger product. This is the age of machinery. The best equipped labor can produce all the way from three to one hundred times as much now as the same labor could have produced a hundred years ago, still, most labor works with inferior equipments. Industrial democracy will not only give regular employment and skilled labor, but the most effective equipment will be within the reach of all. That will increase the product. But managerial ability what of that? The man of unusual capacity what chance will he have to win and to hold the place of first im- portance in the processes of production? For that, it is said, is necessary to a large product. The final authority under industrial monop- oly is now vested in the stockholder. As indus- DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM trial monopolies develop, the stockholder is more and more absent from the actual work and ignorant of its processes. He can judge of the capacity of the hired boss only by his dividends or his lack of dividends. Now the usual wage worker cannot live at all except he works as the hired servant of a hired boss. The hired boss cannot hold his job as boss unless he works his men harder and faster, gets more out of them, and gives them less for it than could any other man, had he his place. It would seem at first thought that under such conditions the largest product would re- sult, but it has been demonstrated in a thou- sand ways that this is not the case. Employ- ment, under such conditions, is very much like slavery, and slavery has been proven to be the most wasteful of all forms of labor. Adam Smith said it was never really profitable. Under present conditions of industrial des- potism the worker is employed under a sys- tem which exhausts his life's productive capac- ity in the briefest possible period and drives him to an early death or to long years of piti- able and unproductive existence. Such man- [40] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY agement guarantees the graft of the private monopolies, but it decreases the amount of the possible product of any particular worker be- cause it shortens the years of effective service, adds to the irregularity of employment, and can secure from such services only what can be secured under compulsion. Long years of service, regular employment, a personal inter- est in the products on the part of the worker, would increase the products and all of these are made certain by industrial democracy. But industrial democracy will not displace the most capable man in the place of the most importance. It offers a different and a better way of finding the most capable man. The workers in the industry would be consulted. The manager would not be appointed by an absent and ignorant despot. All the workers on the job would be benefited by the most effi- cient management. They would be interested because they would be benefited in discovering and promoting the most efficient organizer, not the most brutal boss. In this way the final authority will be in the man most highly skilled and most vitally inter- ested, not in an unskilled absentee whose main [41] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM task in life is, not to render service, but to select those who, as his personal servants, will wear out and waste the life services of the others. Industrial despotism, like all other despo- tisms, fixes final mastery by the accident of birth, picks out the principal men before they are born. Industrial democracy, like all other democracies, picks out its principal men after they are born, and does not need to wait for them to die in order to escape from an unfor- tunate choice of servants, not masters. Indus- trial democracy not only provides for the most capable man in the most important place, but it has a better way of finding him out and for keeping him always in the place where he can render the best services. The Ford Automobile Company, by increas- ing wages and sharing profits both with pro- ducers and consumers, increased its shop ef- ficiency by thirty per cent in a single year. Profit sharing has everywhere increased ef- ficiency. When profits are no longer shared with those who render no share of the service of production, and the total product goes to the producer, then every motive will operate [42] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY towards efficiency and a better, not an inferior, management will result. With better management, skilled labor, the best possible equipment, and continuous em- ployment for all, there will be a larger product. As to the quality of the goods, it may be said that shoddy, adulteration, and every other form of industrial fraud is now possible be- cause the men who produce these things are under the management of men who do not themselves expect to use the particular things produced. If the workers were themselves the managers of production as well as the users of the things produced, fraud would at once be ruled out. No one makes raspberry jam out of millet seed and stock-yards refuse for home consumption. Because of these considerations, it is seen that industrial democracy would mean both a larger and a better product. Second. Will industrial democracy tend towards race degeneracy? Under industrial despotism, the first claim on all the industry of the race is to provide [43] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM rents, dividends and interest payments for the industrial despots. Under industrial democ- racy normal human needs and desires can again assert themselves, and then the first claims on all industry will speedily become the highest interests of the whole race life ; and these high- est interests are forever dependent on wife- hood, motherhood and childhood. That would not tend towards race degeneracy. With the workers made the masters of their own employment because of the regular and profitable employment of the natural bread winners, child labor would cease at once, for the reason that that would leave the further exploitation of childhood entirely without ex- cuse. The two millions of American children who are now bearing the burdens and responsi- bilities of grown-up people would go back to the school, to the playground, and to the fire- side. That would not tend to race degeneracy. With the workers the masters of their own industries under industrial democracy, the un- employed and the irregularly employed would be saved from the demoralization incident to the self -destroying periods of enforced idleness when hope dies and vice and crime so easily [44] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY follow in the footsteps of despair. That would not tend to race degeneracy. General Gorgas says that the best possible sanitary measure this country could adopt would be to double the wages of all the work- ers. That would still be less than giving them all that they would be able to produce with all the time employment, scientific management and the best possible equipment. Tuberculosis, typhoid, diphtheria and all the other infectious and most destructive diseases are the especial enemies of the poor. Low vitality, because of hunger and exposure, makes them easy victims of these destroyers. A rational opportunity to live, which democratic management of industry would speedily secure for all, would make an end of these destroyers. That would not tend to race degeneracy. The improvement of the equipments, the making of all labor skilled labor, and that labor regularly employed, would make possible the shortening of the hours of labor and the length- ening of the hours of leisure. Wherever that has happened, it has led to the spending of more money for books and less for beer. That does not tend to race degeneracy. [45] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM For the same reasons, under industrial de- mocracy the mother could go back to her family and the father could become again the play- mate of his children. That would not tend to race degeneracy. Increasing idiocy, insanity and crime can be accounted for only by the conditions of anxi- ety, exposure and disease especially incidental to the killing pace and the cruel burdens inci- dent to industrial despotism. To restore nor- mal industrial conditions, as would be done under industrial democracy, will do more than all else to restore the social conditions under which the fruits of the tree of life would no longer be found in increasing numbers in the feeble-minded, the vicious, the criminal, and the insane. That would not tend to race degen- eracy. The school, the church, the family these are the great social agencies for human bet- terment. Under industrial democracy, the time for the just demands of these institutions, the funds for their support, and the strength of body and the peace of mind which makes possible and profitable study, worship, love all these will be at last within the reach [46] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY of all. That will not tend to race degen- eracy. Industrial democracy will produce more goods and better goods. It will also produce stronger people, wiser people and better peo- ple. It will deliver mankind from race degen- eracy and will start anew the processes of the evolutionary perfection of the human race. Third. It only remains to ask, "Will indus- trial democracy corrupt the state?" The government is now corrupt, but not be- cause the people are bad. Even bad people want others to behave themselves. The demo- cratic and republican parties have not cor- rupted the government. These parties, like the general government and the great municipali- ties, are not the authors of corruption. Polit- ical parties, both in and out of office are cor- rupt, when they are corrupt, because there are certain great private interests which must exist under industrial despotism, and which profit most when the government is most corrupt. These are the private interests of the indus- trial monopolies, the professional politicians, and the purchasable voters. [47] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM The industrial monopolies could not use the public power as they do, did they depend on intelligent public majorities for their ability to do so. They can secure and keep control of these public powers only by the misuse of polit- ical parties, and they are able to do this because of their power, by the use of money, to make or break the men temporarily in control of political organizations. The only method by which they can secure their own interests is by political corruption. Hence, they are ceaseless workers in political practices necessarily corrupt. Why do some men sell their votes? There are several reasons. Sometimes it is because these votes are the only things they have to sell which are marketable. Sometimes it is because when they sell their votes and make the deliv- eries, they don't miss anything which they had before. But it is always true that they sell their votes because the private owners of the great industrial monopolies are ever ready and able to make the purchase. These purchasable voters are almost entirely made by the misfortunes incidental to indus- trial despotism. The industrial despots use [48] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY those whom they have already ruined to keep the power to ruin others. A learned profession may be said to be a calling in which one can make his living espe- cially because of what he knows. The things the professional politician must especially know are how to reach the boodling industrial despot on the one hand and the purchasable voter on the other. Then he collects the boodle from the one with which to buy the vote of the other and, using this vote as a balance of power be- tween the votes of decent and honest men of all parties, he makes out of this combination of the richest and the most disreputable, the most powerful factor in modern politics. So long as industrial despotism remains, it is impossible to devise any means of escape from this combination of vicious and anti-social inter- ests and the resulting misuse of public power. But if the private ownership of the great monopolies was abolished, and the workingmen were to vote within the industries in which they are employed and so become the masters of these industries, as they would do under indus- trial democracy, then there would remain no [49] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM private interests within the industries which could be opposed to the common good. The boodler's barrel would disappear along with the industrial despot's loss of power. There would be no despots under industrial de- mocracy to buy franchises or to monopolize and abuse industrial opportunities. Public fran- chises would not be for sale at any price and industrial opportunities would be provided for all on equal terms. There would be no pur- chasable vote under industrial democracy. The men whose votes are bought are at the bottom of the human scale. Now they are able to live as idlers because beggary and theft are inseparable from industrial despotism. They tell one they are hungry and without work. They are given bread by those who cannot give them work. When work is always within the reach of all workers, then such men will go hungry or they will go to work. If they go hungry, they will not last long, after which they will cease from troubling. If they go to work, they will vote in the industry in which they are employed and about the things which they help to do. Then they will have some- thing besides their votes which will be market- [50] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY able. Then they will miss something should they sell their votes. Then their votes will be directly related to the things which they, them- selves, would be engaged in doing. Then they cannot vote burdens upon others which will not fall upon themselves. Then they cannot vote to give away what is not their own, or what concerns them only in some remote and uncer- tain way. Then they will vote about their own affairs, and they will know about what they vote about. Therefore they cannot be misled. They will be personally and vitally interested in the result. Hence, they cannot be bought. No private interest would remain which could afford to pay them what their votes would be worth to them in their own busi- ness. The purchasable vote and the boodler's bar- rel both go with the coming of industrial democ- racy. After their departure, the professional politician becomes an impossibility. Political corruption is alone possible because of the in- dustrial despot. The political boss and the purchasable vote must go also with the going of industrial despotism and the coming of in- dustrial democracy. [51] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM And so, again, industrial democracy, instead of threatening to corrupt the government, proves to be, on examination, the only means of escape from the corruption which has befallen the government under industrial despotism and which must last as long as industrial despotism lasts. The machinery of self-government, if it is to be effective anywhere, must be constructed so as to be available wherever collective inter- ests are found. To consent to a pretense of democracy under forms of organization under which real democracy is impossible is an old trick of the beaten despots. Collective inter- ests are not only found in the industries, but the greatest collective interests of all are in these industries. A scheme of self-government which still makes self-governing industries im- possible and leaves the millions who vote, de- pendent for their existence on the wishes of great private monopolies, will not avail in the struggle for world-wide mastery between des- potism and democracy. Political democracy cannot endure if it rests on an economic foundation of industrial des- potism. Industrial democracy, once estab- [52] INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY lished, democracy must and will become at once triumphant in every other department of human interest and endeavor, for the reason that when despotism can no longer threaten the means by which the millions live, no other mo- tive can be found strong enough and vile enough to make possible any longer, anywhere, the infamous relationship of mastery and servi- tude. [53] CHAPTER V THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE The vote is the means by which a member of any group gives expression to his wishes con- cerning its collective affairs. The right to be heard in such a way is called the elective fran- chise. The right to vote is much older than the be- ginnings of written human history. It has been seen that under the earliest forms of society the tribesmen not only acted together by com- mon consent, but the questions of dispute were so simple and the interests of each so per- fectly evident that the tribal groups were able to determine the simple questions arising among them by unanimous agreement. Under such conditions no one was asked to help to do that which he did not personally feel to be the wisest thing to be done. The unanimous agree- ment required in a modern trial by jury is a survival of this ancient usage. [54] THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE In the barbarian village communities which were everywhere in existence in the last days of barbarism this democracy was everywhere present. There were few things to be decided, and no decision was arrived at except by unani- mous agreement. When to the simple occupations of the earlier barbarism was added worldwide military ad- venture, unanimous agreement in the choice of commanders and in making decisions as to the policy to be adopted for the battle, immediately at hand, became impossible. Thus majority rule succeeded unanimous consent because of the exigencies arising out of military neces- sity. The conquered tribes were enslaved, and so lost all voice in the management of their own affairs. The conquering tribes continued dem- ocratic self-government as to their own affairs for many centuries. The elections reported in the writings of Moses concerning important matters in the rise of the Jewish nation, the elections among the Greek tribes and later in the Greek cities, and the elections among the Romans, are all in- [55] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM stances of the survival of an elective franchise, not established as a modern achievement but inherited as one of the most ancient usages of human society. In some of the Swiss Cantons elections are still held by all the people gathering on a day which is made a holiday, a day of feasting, and of sports, and the decisions are taken by gath- ering into opposite groups, those on the oppos- ing sides of the proposal submitted. This is not only a survival of a usage so ancient that the memory of man "runneth not to the con- trary," but it is a survival of the very forms of the more ancient elections. The despotic form of government, as op- posed to democracy, found its beginning when the war chief of some ancient tribe refused longer to submit to the elections of his tribes- men, and so carried into his own tribe the mili- tary forms of administration which had been established by him over the peoples in con- quered districts. All the contests of modern history, so far as they relate to the rise of free institutions, have been efforts to capture back from military masters this elective fran- [56] THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE chise .which military mastery had taken away. Self-government in the free cities of medi- aeval Europe, self-government in the American republics, the struggle for self-government in all the outlying colonies of all races and nations are only instances in this effort to recover this most rational right of all, the right for all to be heard on those matters which are the con- cern of all. The first half of the nineteenth century was a period of most marvelous advance among English speaking people in the extension of the elective franchise. In the United States only a small percentage of the people were voters at the beginning of the last century. Woodrow Wilson, in his "History of the American People," says, "There were probably not more than one hun- dred and twenty thousand men who had the right to vote out of all the four million inhabi- tants enumerated at the first census (1790)." All sorts of limitations were placed upon the franchise. Voters were required to be mem- bers of a particular church, to be long-time residents in a particular neighborhood, to be [57] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM owners of a particular kind of property, or they were voiceless in all matters, no matter how vitally they might concern them. The earliest advance of the elective fran- chise in America was secured by those who passed beyond the Alleghenies and established new states in the Mississippi Valley. Here they assumed universal suffrage and, just be- cause every man was possessed of his own rifle, he insisted upon the right to vote. As new states were added in the West, the older states fell under the western influence and gradually the principle of manhood suffrage has been quite generally admitted in America. In all English colonies, the suffrage is much more advanced, better safeguarded and ap- proaches more nearly to the ideals of manhood suffrage than in the mother country, where plural voting still prevails, that is, as many votes for each man as he owns pieces of prop- erty in the different election districts. In Great Britain, at this time, nearly one- half of all her native-born male citizens who are twenty-one years of age, are not permitted to participate in the elections. Both in Great [58] THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE Britain and in all other English speaking coun- tries, with but few exceptions and in the most limited manner, all women are forbidden to vote. Let it be borne in mind that the only reason why any one votes, or should vote, is because those who vote together have interests of some sort which affect them together. So long as a woman is seriously concerned in the laws of the country and is vitally affected by all the acts of the government, it is impossible to discover any rational ground why she should be refused the opportunity to be heard in matters which so directly concern her. That woman is not permitted to vote is not the result of a deliberate purpose. It is, in- stead, an inheritance from the time when all governments were military in their character, when voters were fighters and the things they voted about were the things they were fighting about. Woman was not present as a soldier. She was not directly a factor in the fighting and accordingly had no share in the voting. As it has been seen, all governments are shifting from the military to the industrial model. The [59] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM overwhelming majority of women are working women and all women are directly concerned in the matters controlled and administered by the modern state. Just because she was not given a vote at the time when she was not di- rectly a factor in the military establishment, is no reason why she should now be denied a vote regarding matters which so vitally concern her in the modern industrial state. There are matters which pertain only to small groups of people. Those who are to- gether concerned in such matters ought to vote together. There is no reason why those who are not concerned should be permitted to vote concerning things which do not concern them, but there is every reason why those who are concerned should be permitted to vote concern- ing the things which do concern them. This should apply to local self-government, to industrial groups, to great geographical subdivisions of territory, and, finally, to great international affairs. If the elective franchise is to be just, it must be extended until none are excluded from being consulted concerning their own affairs, but at [60] THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE the same time, limited until no one shall be permitted to vote in matters which in no way concern him. The world has outgrown the simple, primitive community. The citizen of the modern state has many interests. It would be impossible justly and effectively to administer collective affairs by unanimous agreement. The long period of military masteiy is at an end. Mili- tary power has brought the ends of the earth together. Its culmination in the European war has outranked all previous records of dis- aster. While militarism lasts, the centralization of authority and the resulting despotism of mili- tary forms of organization are inevitable. But that is despotism. The ballot is as essential to democracy as the bayonet is to despotism. Ma- jority rule is the only rational method of ad- ministering the affairs of a free state. The elective franchise must be universal. It must be given on equal terms to all who share in the advantages and bear the responsibilities of liv- ing within the borders of such a state. [61] THE BUSINESS BODY CALLED THE STATE The State, it has been seen, comprises in its organization all forms of organized activity. This includes all forms of business organiza- tions. The State itself is nothing more than such a business body. The State exists in order to do certain things. These things involve all the collective activities of society and especially those involved in the great business of making a living, that is, pro- viding for the general welfare. Smaller business bodies issue shares of stock as indicating the membership in them of those persons of whom they are composed. The members of such a business body are called shareholders, or partners, as the case may be. The members of the business body called the State are called citizens and their right to par- ticipate in the control of the State is called the elective franchise, or the right to vote. [62] THE BUSINESS BODY CALLED THE STATE Politics is nothing else than the business of carrying on those affairs in which all the mem- bers of society are jointly concerned. An elec- tion is, in fact, a shareholders' meeting, held to elect directors or superintendents and to vote instructions to these public servants as to the wishes of the public to which the business belongs. The State, the government, the public, the social organism, call it what you will, the col- lective life of all the people is simply a big business corporation or unlimited partnership in which everybody is an equal shareholder with all the rest. It has been aptly and truthfully said that every citizen of the United States is an equal shareholder in the richest and most powerful business corporation on all the earth. Notice some of the sound business principles which no rationally conducted, privately owned business would ignore, but which do not usually prevail in the control of the business of the State as a business body. 1. In a rationally conducted business, no shareholder votes for a director because he is a [63] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM friend or a relative or because he is a fellow- member of a church or a lodge. It would not be "good business'* to do so. No one would vote for a republican, a demo- crat, or a prohibitionist to help manage a gold mine or a shoe factory on account of politics, not capacity. A corporation whose affairs were so managed would, in the end, be managed by a receiver. No capable builder employs carpenters be- cause he is personally fond of them, or keeps them on the job for social, religious, or partisan reasons, or for any other reason, any longer than they are satisfactory as workingmen. The only questions asked in the employment of labor, in a rationally conducted, privately owned business, are questions as to efficiency and responsibility. The introduction of any other matters would be disloyalty to the busi- ness. One of the strongest arguments offered by the trades unions for the closed shop is the guarantee that it offers, of the efficiency and responsibility of the men so employed. But the State is such a business body. All of the people are all the time serving the State in some way, so far as they are useful people. [64] THE BUSINESS BODY CALLED THE STATE Elections only mean promotion in the service, the enlargement of the opportunities for serv- ice, and the increase of responsibility in the case of those specially chosen for special social tasks in the promotion of the common good. Efficiency and responsibility, the ability to do well and the certainty that they will do well the things demanded of them, ought to be the sole and only test for promotion in the public service as well as in the wise administration of the smaller and so-called private business companies. The things demanded of public servants are made known through earlier precedents, through instructions given by a referendum, through the established laws, and through the platforms of the successful parties in the elec- tions, that is, of the meetings of the share- holders of the municipality, the State, or the nation. The introduction of any other consideration is an abuse or an abandonment of the functions of good citizenship and, so far as it gives clique, creed, race prejudice, or great private interests the advantage, it is a surrender to despotism and the betrayal of democracy. [65] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM 2. In the election of a corporation director, no shareholder would be refused a vote be- cause a woman, or for any other reason what- soever, so long as the shareholder's interest in the business was admitted and his ownership not disputed. Women who are out in active opposition to woman suffrage, that is, in opposition to women having voice in the greatest of all busi- ness bodies and in which they are admitted to be shareholders, do not themselves neglect or refuse to vote their own shares in railway, in- surance, manufacturing, and banking com- panies. The State is not a "social clique," or a pri- vate club. The relations of the citizens to each other are not the relations of the club members in any certain "social set." The re- lations of the citizens of any State to each other are purely and only of a business char- acter. No white man refuses to sell goods to or to buy corn or cotton from a negro, an ignorant farmer, a woman or a foreign born citizen, or even a criminal under the law. In every rational business body, the only question asked [66] THE BUSINESS BODY CALLED THE STATE is, "In what way are you concerned"? It is frankly admitted if one is in no way concerned in any matter, then he has no business to inter- fere, but if he is concerned his right to be heard and to be taken into account must not be de- nied. In the business body called the State, all are shareholders, all are concerned, all have the right to vote, each on the single share that he holds no more and no less. And every- one has that right, regardless of sex, race, nat- ionality, possessions, payment of poll taxes, education, character, or occupation, for in spite of any of these considerations he is still a share- holder. In so far as this shareholder's right is denied to anyone for any reason, despotism is triumphant and democracy abandoned. 3. No private business corporation would buy from another what it could produce with its own equipment and within its own resources at a less price or of a better quality. All the world over the State, society, the great collectivity, is all the time paying for the use of the natural resources, for transporta- tion, for manufactures, for the use of credit, [67] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM for storage, and for final distribution, vast sums in excess of the cost of these things and services. This is especially true of naval and military equipment and of the food, clothing and sup- plies of armies and of the munitions of war. But through all the great social services of every sort, the great business body called the State, in which all are shareholders, is being robbed by these smaller business bodies, the private monopolies, in which the many are not shareholders. These vast sums, in excess of the cost of the services, are privately appropri- ated to the enrichment and demoralization of the few and to the oppression and impoverish- ment of the many, with great corresponding loss to the State, that is, to the common good. If the State, with all its powers and re- sources, were the direct possession of a great private company, it is inconceivable that this wasteful and unbusinesslike and harmful pol- icy of buying from another what the company could more cheaply produce for itself, would long prevail. While it does prevail it can prevail only through the control by the private interests [68] THE BUSINESS BODY CALLED THE STATE of the few of the affairs of all. This can be done only through special privileges of some sort, but that is despotism. So far and so long as that prevails, despotism still sur- vives. At this point in the argument, the claim is made that inasmuch as this sort of business in- ability is shown by the State, therefore, the State cannot safely be trusted with the direct administration of great business affairs. But it is seen above that the State fails as it does fail only because of the control of the State by great private interests. The failure of the State to provide for the common good, through the failure of the State to attend ef- fectively to its own affairs, is the failure of State control by great private interests. There- fore it is an argument for the ending of the control by the great private interests of pub- lic affairs and for securing in the direct serv- ices of the State, the great managerial ability of those who do make good in the affairs of the few, and could make good in the affairs of all, if made the servants of all instead of the bond- slaves of the few. [69] Every undertaking by which the State, the whole body of the people, substitutes public enterprise for any great private monopoly and so secures at the cost of the service, the use of natural resources, transportation, manufac- ture, credit, storage, or delivery, helps to make an end of this wasteful and unbusinesslike mis- management of the collective affairs of all. It saves the needless payments of unearned ground rents, unearned interest payments, and unearned monopoly profits, and it saves the State from the demoralization of those who get what they do not earn and the impoverishment of those who earn what they do not get. So far and so fast as this prevails, despotism dies and democracy is made triumphant. The State is a business body. Everybody is a shareholder in the State. The manage- ment of the State is everybody's business. When everybody will give intelligent attention to his own business, on real business principles, favor- itism, clique rule, monopoly control that is, despotism will disappear and democracy will prevail. [TO] PART II CURRENT POLITICS CHAPTER VII POLITICAL PAETIES Questions of public controversy are rarely of such a nature that their final settlement at any particular time is possible. Whatever pub- lic problems may be settled today, new forms of activity will change the conditions under which the settlement was affected and repro- duce tomorrow the same old problems for fur- ther consideration. If it were not so, questions of public policy could be settled once and for all, and town councils, legislatures, congresses, and parlia- ments could be finally and forever adjourned. Each new adjustment creates a new envi- ronment and ultimately a new man within the new environment. It is not altogether true that the environment creates the man, or that the man creates the environment. The envi- ronment and the man are forever acting and re-acting on each other. Each new change in DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM man means a new change in his environment, and each such change means a new adjust- ment. Politics has to do with these continuous re- adjustments of laws and institutions, which are the conscious and purposeful creation of man's collective interests, always abreast of the "new occasions" which forever "teach new duties." It is frequently complained that conflicting, sordid, personal clique, class, or race interests, interfere with man's rational progress. But the sum total of these interests makes up the environment and just because this environment is forever changing changing as the result of every activity of man the fact is, that these in- terests are themselves the very elements and means of human progress. Thus it is seen that the problems of politics are problems ever in process of solution, yet never solved. It is because of this that all rational advance is not independent of, or in spite of, but because of these conflicting, sordid, personal, clique, class or race interests of men. Therefore, rational advance will be sought for, not by ignoring these conflicting interests, not in the effort to POLITICAL PARTIES avoid them, but in the midst of, and by means of, these very conflicts. We have seen how the ballot, the right to be heard and to be accounted for, is the point of attachment between the individual and the col- lectivity of which he is a part. It is by the power of this ballot, or right to be heard, in his own hands that he makes himself an ef- fective part in whatever group he may find himself a factor. It is by this ballot, in the hands of others, that his relations to others and the demands of others upon himself are effect- ively made known to him. Should one attempt to act singly in the use of his ballot, the power of his citizenship could be but slightly felt in communities where the majority vote is the final authority. The only effective use of the ballot is in its collective use. The only rational method by which bal- lots can be so massed as to have the force of majorities and so to control the public power is by their collective use. The very nature of voting is an array of interests with each other, or against each other, which groups of men hold with each other, or against each other. [75] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM In primitive communities there were no regu- larly organized political parties. The ques- tions dealt with were simple, easily understood, and readily disposed of by a show of hands, or by a division into groups standing apart in expression of conflicting interests or wishes. It was in this way that the small village com- munities of the later days of barbarism met the simple questions of common defense, or of the personal quarrels among the tribesmen. New questions were easily understood, and as there was practically economic equality of opportu- nity there were no lasting economic classes with- in the barbarian communities on which to base the existence of regularly organized political parties. And just because permanent economic classes did not exist, permanent political par- ties had no share in the life of the field and forest dwellers in the savage and barbarian communities. In the same way, even now, no small village composed of citizens, having practically the same economic interests, would be able to or- ganize and preserve permanent political par- ties, lasting on through the years, were it not [76] POLITICAL PARTIES for the greater national interests, which first cause the existence of such parties and after- wards are able to maintain their existence, even in such localities, not because of any local con- flict of interests, but because the larger national organizations are able to dominate the small communities. Thus national parties come into existence as the representatives of conflicting economic in- terests. In small neighborhoods, where the economic interests are understood to be all one way, or the other, separate contending political parties, with nothing to contend about, are able to maintain only an uncertain and precarious existence. As the barbarian tribes, through the process of federation, grew into the ancient nations, political parties made their appearance. The Patrician and Plebeian parties of Rome were a typical instance of what occurred when- ever an unequal economic status led to a gen- eral clash of economic interests. The Gracchi did not create these parties. The clash of interests created the opposing groups and the Gracchi became the spokesmen [77] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM of the Plebeians, not because they wanted to talk about something, not just because they wanted a party, but because the war of interests was raging and they were bound to speak and vote and, if need be, to fight, in order to win the victory for the group whose cause they had espoused. New interests demand new adjustments. Each new adjustment is made necessary by a clash of interests, else there would be nothing to adjust. Just because the clash of interests forces the new adjustments, it creates new par- ties or rebuilds old ones, and just because this is the only way of securing the adjustment of old conditions to new interests, the political party becomes a most important factor in pol- itics. It is, in fact, the last step in the process by which, with or without a resort to arms, new interests obtain the mastery in the modern state. It is therefore, the last alternative next preceding civil war. The triumphant polit- ical party must be obeyed or government fail or civil war must follow. Its purpose is to compel obedience to the public will and to avoid civil war. [18] POLITICAL PARTIES If the political party could always exist for such a purpose the current problems of popular government would be easily solved. But the fact is that while all this is true, nevertheless, it is also true that political parties, like governments themselves, like churches, fraternities, and all other associations of men no matter how hard it is to build them for a worthy purpose, when that purpose has once been served, or when organizations can no longer serve the purposes for which they have been created, it is harder to get rid of them, when no longer needed, than it was to build them in the first place. Party battle cries, personal memories of de- parted leaders, the sense of belonging to the group that won the pennant, to an organiza- tion with a history, to an organization which is the only point of connection between one's self and great and distinguished people, the few living and the many dead all these make the abandonment of any kind of an organization difficult when once it has served a great and beneficent purpose. Such party fealty becomes a sort of a polit- [79] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM ical superstition, and just as a religious super- stition may survive the death of religion itself and so secure a wicked and worthless servant of the church, so does political superstition lead millions of people to loyally support outworn and impossible political parties in utter disre- gard of the public good. If self-government is to prevail the organi- zation and management of political parties must be taken seriously in hand, for political parties are, and are likely to remain, a com- manding factor in the machinery of self-gov- ernment. If condemnation could have disposed of pol- itical parties, then they would have disap- peared long ago. If urging public men to be above party spirit and to love their country more than their party could avail, then political parties would have been forever agencies solely for the public good. If warnings against the dangers of party spirit were sufficient, then the sober farewell words of Washington, the first President of the United States, would have made partisan [80] POLITICAL PARTIES abuse of the power of citizenship impossible. The world will long remember Washington. It has long ago forgotten or ignored these part- ing words. The greatest problem in politics, greater than any measure presented by any and all parties, is the problem involved in the construc- tion of the machinery of self-government in such a way that the power of party organiza- tion, the rush, the enthusiasm and the resistless force of numbers will help to secure the ends of just and capable self- government. This involves some means for making known the merits of new measures, for easily creating new majorities on behalf of new measures, for forcing questions of controversy to a speedy and certain settlement, and, finally, some means of compelling absolute obedience to the public will by the men entrusted with the public power. These things once secured, society will not then escape from political parties, but the current abuses of party organization will be- come impossible. The "fire of party-spirit" will not go out. [81] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It will be confined in the furnace. There it will create the energy, which, usefully applied, will hasten human progress as has no other instrument of social service yet known to man. [82] CHAPTER VIII OBSTRUCTIVE FORMS OF PARTY ORGANIZATION Every new partisan measure takes on its earliest form and gets its first public support in a caucus of some sort. The caucus may be privately held and made up of invited men representing some faction of a party, or it may be open, well advertised, and composed of such members of a party as may take the trouble to attend. Here programs are agreed on, candidates named for primary elections, if they are to be held, or delegates selected for conventions, when the primary is not required. In any event, it is the caucus which rules the policy of the party, names its authorized spokesmen, and makes the beginnings of all political war- fare. When primaries are held, a factional slate is made for each faction or active interest in a factional caucus, and preparations are made [83] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM for winning the control of the party, through victory at the primaries. Then the conventions follow city, county, state and national con- ventions. In all of these, the conflicts at the first under- taken in the caucuses are fought out over and over again for final mastery within the party. No one can ever tell, in a satisfactory man- ner, the story of the swaps, bargains, mutual understandings, alliances, betrayals, purchases, sell outs, parades, banners, factional headquar- ters, midnight intrigues, carousals, manufac- tured excitement and personal excesses which characterize these various conventions. Con- fusion is specially planned for. Disorder is arranged subiect to the call of those who need it and it is continued for a fixed number of minutes, on each special occasion, as it may arise, all arranged and paid for in advance. It is doubtful whether any self-respecting citizen has ever taken an active share in such a convention, and has yelled his share of the yell- ing, and afterwards has discovered the nature of the performance in which he has been en- gaged, who has not reflected on his own con- [84] PARTY ORGANIZATION duct with deep humiliation as having been guilty of an act altogether unworthy of a ra- tional human being. Such political conventions are not and can- not be made deliberative bodies. Not more than one hundred people can be participators in a parliamentary body, which is at the same time to be deliberative in its proceedings, that is, a body which is to act after due deliberation and because of its deliberation. Nothing is more rare than for one to change his position as the result of a discussion of some proposed public measure in such a convention and when one does so change his position, he is immediately despised for having done so. It never occurs to his fellow delegates that he may have been deliberating in a deliberative body. To make a new deal is easily under- stood; to pretend to change one's mind that is nothing but false pretense. Political conventions are purposely made large, unwieldy, noisy and unparliamentary. That serves best the purposes of the makers of slates and most effectively converts the con- vention into an instrument for betraying the public good. [85] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM The usual work of a political convention cov- ers the making of party rules, of a party plat- form, the naming of candidates, and the elec- tion of committees. Rules and platforms are usually written overnight under conditions where only the most hasty and unsatisfactory work can be undertaken. Such a platform is the result of such numerous compromises and of such hasty and ill-considered action that it is usually an instrument which no one can conscientiously endorse or long respect. It then becomes the function of letters of acceptance and campaign speeches to make up for its deficiences and to explain away its omis- sions and accidents. The public officers, sup- posed to have been elected for the purpose of carrying out the platform declarations usually proceed to administer the public offices for the private advantage of the special interests in control, while platform promises are held up for ridicule or are entirely ignored. Sometimes platforms are not written over- night. They have been prepared long in ad- vance by special and powerful interests. In such a case the platform committee is made [86] PARTY ORGANIZATION up in the convention of the agents and spokes- men of these same interests. Such a committee makes no pretense of writing the platform. It favorably reports the platform already written. Such platforms usually appeal to the prej- udices of the people, are carefully written with the purpose to excite and to enlist every par- tisan feeling, and entirely to overlook or in- definitely to postpone all questions of real con- troversy. In such platforms, issues that are to be made the very center of campaign battles are indef- initely stated, and then, after the shouting is over and the voting is done, it is still a question whether the promised revision really meant "revision up" or "revision down." The same is true with regard to candidates. All the deliberating is done in advance. Dele- gates are elected, pledged either publicly or privately to do certain things, to support cer- tain candidates, not to deliberate but to obey. If any particular candidate cannot get the nomination, then the leaders of his group are free to bargain and the usual delegate con- [87] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM firms the action of the "boss" and votes accord- ing to the group to which he belongs, regard- less alike both of his own intelligence and of the public good. The only excuse for the existence of party conventions is that men get together to confer, to deliberate, to get the benefit of joint judge- ment, but none of these things are possible in the ordinary political conventions. Thought- ful men are always disappointed. Only the intriguers and bargainers, who want what can- not be secured by calm consideration, are heard to declare when the work is over: "The great- est gathering of thoughtful men ever assem- bled in calm consideration of a nation's des- tiny." The party committees are made up of men who are entitled to more consideration than ever has been given them. It is these com- mittees, which control the preliminary arrange- ments for all conventions. They manipulate the delegations, control their organization, ap- point their committees, furnish the committee reports, ready made, or in the making, name the candidates, name their successors in office, [881 PARTY ORGANIZATION conduct the campaigns, and when the voting is over seek to use whatever of public power has been secured for their party, not in the ef- fort to secure the public good, but so to man- age affairs as to create situations which will make their own future control of their party possible. Political party committees are always held responsible for immediate partisan benefits. When partisan benefits and the public welfare come in conflict, should the committee forget the party but remember the common good, or should it serve the party in such a way as to make its reelection impossible, then the poli- ticians and the private interests speedily ar- range for a new committee one that "can make good." It is because of these limitations in the way of service and because of these powers for harm that such committees forever exist under conditions and for purposes inconsistent with the public welfare. The party committee, like the party itself, cannot be ignored, cannot be disposed of. Improved machinery which will make service for the public good the only con- trolling consideration, both for the party and [89] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM for the committees controlling the party, is, above all things, necessary if rational self- government is to prevail. Campaigns should always be campaigns of education. The purposes of the campaigns are to present the merits of the measures proposed, the de-merits of the measures opposed, and the qualifications of the candidates. Vast sums of money are raised which are un- necessary for these purposes. Great armies of workers are employed who know nothing of the issues involved, and who could not explain them even if they did understand them. But these workers seek for, and obtain votes by methods which do not appeal to the public intelligence nor are they subject to moral considerations. In the great general elections a hundred or more different persons are running as candi- dates for local, state, and national offices. All these are grouped together, while as many ques- tions of public importance are at the same time under consideration, any one of which would be worthy of more attention than all together are able to secure in an ordinary campaign docu- [90] PARTY ORGANIZATION ment, or at an ordinary campaign meeting. The information given is hastily prepared. It is prepared by those directly interested in the conclusions reached. It is distributed at the expense of those who are directly seeking pri- vate benefit through the use of the public power. It is not possible for one to be in entire agreement with all these measures, but he can- not vote for the measures he wants without at the same time voting for the measures he does not want. Of the candidates who are named on his party's ticket, he cannot know them all. Some of those whom he does know, he knows to be unworthy of his confidence. Yet he can- not oppose those whom he does not want with- out endangering the election of those whom he does want. In the midst of such doubt as to the facts, as to the merits of measures, as to the merits of candidates, and as to the real outcome of victory or defeat, is it any wonder that large and increasing numbers of the most intelligent citizens take no share in party affairs and are not even coming to the elections to share in a farce which they can see no way to avoid and [91] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM have not the unfortunate capacity longer to endure ? In the elections the registrations are falsi- fied. Repeaters are registered at the same time in different precincts or wards and even in different cities and states. Men are shipped into doubtful districts to vote under registra- tions attached to vacant lots or to other places of impossible residence, or to vote under the names of men long dead but still carried on the voters lists for the very purpose of provid- ing an opportunity of perpetrating election frauds. Working men easily lose their resi- dence under the law and in that way lose their right to be voters, and hence, some millions of citizens who are most vitally interested in the elections are each year unable to vote at all. It is well known that in great municipalities the political machines of both parties have a joint machine covering the activities of both parties for business purposes. These machines make up and control election boards, and some- times they make the count to correspond to the exigencies of a bargain to "make good" for [92] PARTY ORGANIZATION some private interest, rather than in accord- ance with the contents of the ballot box. Self-government, that is, democracy as against despotism, is on trial for its life. Yet those interests which are wholly despotic have provided for democracy a method of organiza- tion and a plan of procedure under which a sham democracy becomes inevitable and real democracy is utterly impossible. A way of escape from the tyranny of the caucus, from the corruption of the registers, from the confusion, disorder and passion of the conventions, from the absurdities of plat- form making, from the personal interests of candidates, and from the dominance of parti- san committees must be found as the only hope of preserving and extending self-governing institutions. [93] CHAPTER IX OBSTRUCTIVE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT PROCEDURE Popular government means the adoption as the highest public authority of whatever may be the real majority choice as to any particular public affair. Political parties primarily and properly exist for the purpose of crystallizing into the forms of law and into the active proc- esses of public administration whatever that majority will may be at any particular time. It will rarely happen that a special student of public affairs will be able to act at any given time in behalf of all measures or policies which, as a result of his special studies, may seem to him to be desirable. Such a specialist must always act for some- thing somewhat less than what he, himself, is ready to support. Such a person is not aban- doning his own convictions by supporting what [94] GOVERNMENT PROCEDURE the majority are ready to accept while pro- moting further study on the part of others with regard to advanced positions to which he, himself, may be prepared to give support. The purposes of self-government will be best se- cured and such a specialist will render the best services if the general average of intelligence and conscience can always be crystallized into public authority. The agitator must seek to raise the general average of intelligence on public matters. The statesman must seek to enact and to enforce that which the general average of intelligence is ready to accept. We have seen in the preceding chapter how the forms of partisan organizations contrive to defeat the public will. It is not only true of the forms of partisan organizations, but the forms of government in the established consti- tutions and usages of all countries are obstruc- tive in their forms of procedure, as related to the doing of the public will. In monarchical countries where courts are appointed and legislation is revised by heredi- tary authorities, the power to defeat the public [95] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM will is direct, easily understood and can be overcome only by revolution. In countries like the United States where popular institutions have been established and the forms of hereditary political authority abolished, the forms of government established for the purposes of obstruction, while not so evident, are frequently found to be even more effective. In the writing of the Constitution of the United States, it is no longer questioned that the purpose of the authors was to protect great private interests against invasion from the popular will. Where governing authority had been heredi- tary, "checks" in the processes of government procedure had been established by the people as against these hereditary authorities. The authors of the American constitution were able to persuade the few who had voice in its adop- tion that even when hereditary authority had been abolished, the "checks" provided at the first as against hereditary authorities should then be made operative as against the public will. The public will was the only remaining power to be made subject to such "checks" and [96] GOVERNMENT PROCEDURE whatever limitations this public will put upon itself, it could have done so only in the behalf of private special privileges. In monarchical countries, constitutional "checks" are directed against those holding hereditary privileges and in behalf of the common people. In represen- tative forms of government, constitutional "checks" are necessarily directed against the common people and in behalf of special privi- leges of some sort still surviving under popular institutions. The United States of America is said to be a Republic. The President, however, is not elected by a direct vote of the people. He is elected by a College of Electors, who are them- selves elected by direct vote in the various states. The majority result in any particular state is alone available in determining the final result. Minorities are not counted. Through this device, it frequently happens that a Presi- dent is elected when only a minority of the people have voted for him and, once elected, his authority is more absolute than is permitted to any hereditary monarch in any constitutional monarchy. He is, in fact, an elected monarch [97] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM and not, as his official title would indicate, the executive officer of a free state. The legislative department of the govern- ment has two houses. The first is elected by a popular vote, fromiCongressional districts cre- ated in proportion to the population, and the other is made up of two Senators from each state, regardless of population and, until very recently, not elected by popular vote at all, but by the several state legislatures. In this way, it happened continuously that men of great personal wealth or acting as the servants of great private interests, through the paying of the campaign expenses of legislative candi- dates, were able to purchase their way to seats in the Senate. In this way it frequently oc- curred that men maintained their positions as Senators from states in which it would have been impossible to elect them to any office what- soever by popular majority. Even now, inasmuch as each state, regardless of its population has two votes in the Senate, it still happens that twenty-five of the smaller states, having a majority vote in the United States Senate, have all together fewer citizens [98] GOVERNMENT PROCEDURE than the two states of New York and Pennsyl- vania. The elected representatives of fourteen mil- lion people in the smaller states now have the power to out-vote the representatives of eighty- six million people in the rest of the nation. Is it any wonder that the senatorial seats of Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, Florida, Wy- oming, Montana, Utah and Nevada are of spe- cial interest to the great private monopolies and are given attention and patronage out of all proportion to their importance? The Justices of the Supreme Court are ap- pointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Neither the people nor the House of Representatives have any voice whatsoever in creating these Justices of the Supreme Court. Once appointed their tenure of office is for life. They can then be reached only by im- peachment proceedings. The Senate may throw out any bill passed by the lower House. The President may veto any bill passed by both Houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, by a majority vote of its members, may declare unconstitutional any [99] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM law after it has been enacted by both Houses of Congress and approved by the President. In international matters, there is no democ- racy. Treaties are negotiated by men appointed for that purpose. Their appointments are con- trolled by those most interested in international trade. The Standard Oil Company has used the diplomatic service of the United States as its business agent for many years. The inter- national commercial and financial interests are the masters of all foreign policies. These inter- ests are controlled by great private monopolies. The great private monopoly interests control the international relations of all the nations. In this country, treaties are confirmed by the Senate. The House of Representatives has nothing to say in the matter. No international representative is elected by a popular vote in any country, nor are these representatives ever made answerable to the public will in any way. International representatives are the agents of despotic interests the world over. But these international treaties, when once made, become the supreme law of all lands [100] GOVERNMENT PROCEDURE affected by them. In the United States, trea- ties take precedence over all the laws of Con- gress, and over all the acts of the legislatures in various states. Despotic private monopoly interests can bind our country, through an international agree- ment, which may concern our most serious do- mestic affairs, and no agency exists by which the democracy of the country can be heard in its own behalf or can reverse any such agree- ments in any matters made the subject of such a trust-made foreign compact. In both Houses of Congress measures when once presented for consideration are at once referred to standing committees. These com- mittees frequently choose to smother in com- mittee meritorious measures. They do so when- ever the congressional machine, of which the chairmen are usually members, so elects. The committee may do so, and the author of the bill though a member of Congress, is helpless to secure the consideration of his measure. He cannot do so without the consent of the com- mittee to which it has been referred or by the unanimous consent of the House. These refer- [101] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM ences are frequently made for the express pur- pose of preventing the consideration of such a bill. Should the committee consent to report the measure to the favorable consideration of the House, the Speaker may recognize or refuse to recognize whomsoever he will during its con- sideration. Again, in this way, and for a lack of a hearing, a meritorious measure may be slaughtered in the House of its friends. If such a measure is passed by either House it must be sent to the other House to be re- ferred again to committees to which point nearly all of the proposed American progres- sive legislation goes, only to go no further. It is the Senate committee which is said to be the burying ground of American progressive legislation. The life of a Congress is for two years. At the end of every two years all measures in proc- ess of consideration are marked off the calendar and the whole process of committee reference, boss ruled discussions, uninformed voting in the one House only to be smothered in the other, must be undertaken all over again if legislation is to advance at all. [102] GOVERNMENT PROCEDURE Again, when an election in the November of any year puts out of office large numbers of the members of the House of Representatives, this discharge of "undesirable" Congressmen does not take effect until the following March, and in the usual course of things the newly elected Congressmen do not take their seats in Congress to undertake the duties of office for more than a year after their election. In the meantime, for a whole winter term the defeated members, against whom the people of their districts have declared their "lack of confidence," still continue to write the laws of the very nation which has repudiated them. While all this is going on under the constitu- tion as it stands it is true that the constitution itself may be amended. But to do so both Houses must concur in a resolution submitting such an amendment. Two-thirds of the State Legislatures must approve of the amendment in order to secure its adoption. But few amendments to the constitution have ever been adopted and these have been adopted in times of great excitement and when [103] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM the majorities necessary for their submission and adoption have had ample partisan reasons for securing such a result. The State Legislatures may propose an amendment to the national constitution when- ever the Legislatures of two-thirds of the states shall concur in such a proposal. When this has been done, it has been held that the action of the various state Legislatures was not taken concurrently, if they did not act at the same time or during a certain year or term of years and, therefore, what the overwhelming majority of the people have demanded, even under the forms of law as they stand, has been refused by these special defenders of monopo- listic power and special privilege in our court of highest resort. Is it not perfectly evident that if the popular will is to be easily and certainly crystallized into public authority, then these "checks" which special privileges have established to limit the use of the public power in behalf of the public good must be set aside? Forms of popular government which operate to make popular government impossible are inconsistent with [104] GOVERNMENT PROCEDURE democracy. They only serve despotic pur- poses and must be abolished. There is little need of holding elections. There is little advantage in discussing public measures. There is little hope for the public welfare if, when the people have spoken by ma- jority, the majority will can be set aside by the act of those who are in no way subject to the power of the majority vote. Real self-government calls for not only a reconstruction of the forms of partisan organi- zation, but the rebuilding of the constitutional forms of public procedure, wherever these forms operate to defeat public will. [105] CHAPTER X MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT The great European war, the prolonged and repeated revolutions in Mexico, the recent great disturbance of the usual occupations of the people together with the transformation of industrial activities which has been occasioned by the demand for the supplies, the weaponsi and the munitions of war, and the unexpected revival of the warlike spirit in the United States, all together make it impossible to give any satisfactory consideiation to the subject of current politics without a brief discussion of militarism and self-government. It has been seen how primitive democracy was destroyed by the rise of militarism in the later days of barbarism because battles could not be managed by a majority vote, and how the exigencies of battle were finally extended to control all of the collective interests of society. [106] MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT It was out of these necessities of war that absolute despotism at the first obtained control in the world and it has so far been the unbroken record of all the wars that they lead to despotism. The private monopoly of land, the coming of chattel slavery, the subjection of woman, the forcing of the whole world into the two classes of soldiers and slaves, and then lords and serfs and finally employers and employees and all the time the one class of the people made up of exploiters and the other of the victims of exploitation, were all of them the fruits of war. The joint existence of military efficiency and democracy is utterly impossible. Every step towards the efficiency of the battalions of fight- ing men is a step away from self-governing institutions. The despots have always been the champions of an effective defensive force against a foreign enemy. But they have always used these defensive forces against the unarmed and defenseless people within their own coun- tries in order to compel submission to industrial conditions to which the workers would not otherwise submit. [107] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM There never was a slave whose bondage was not created and enforced by soldiers, and there never have been great military establishments without, sooner or later, these soldiers have been used to maintain compulsory industrial service, at the first to provide the supplies and the munitions of war, and finally, to produce wealth in which the workers had no ownership through the right of the producer and from which they were able to obtain but the barest subsistence. This is why in all ages the real masters of the armies have been the real masters of indus- try. The war lord and the landlord have al- ways worn the same clothing, exercised the same powers, in fact, have been the same persons. Still there are serious problems in the mod- ern world which must be solved before the armies can altogether be disbanded. In the final triumph of industrial justice it is inconceivable that the prison, the policeman and the criminal court will not practically dis- appear. But no one proposes their immediate abolition. The real problem is how (1) to ex- [108] MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT tend industrial justice until it will be infinitely easier to get things by earning them than in any other way and, by making an end of in- dustrial oppression and the innumerable petty personal injuries which must always remain as long as industrial oppression remains, in that way, remove all incitement to criminal action and (2) at the same time, by improved social and sanitary conditions so to add to the charac- ter, self-respect and power of self-restraint as practically to make an end of the crimes of personal degeneracy. While this work is going forward, the police- man can be made more and more an agent in all sorts of social service. He can be made an educational, sanitary, statistical worker as well as a mere restraining officer. With the aid of schools for the study of criminology, sociology and psychology, as schools of special training for these social servants the character and the service of the police department can be transformed, and in the end, in these several ways, the brutal, offensive and ignorant club- swinging guards can be made into the effective social servants of a rational and orderly com- munity. [109] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM Much in the same way, the army as a power for political wrong doing, must be captured and used for social betterment in such a way that its age-long work of slaughter and oppres- sion may be changed and harnessed at last to social services of the highest order. It must be admitted that, unfortunate as is the presence of the army in the modern world, still no one country is likely to disarm in the pres- ence of the armed forces of all other countries. It is not likely that the industrial masters of any country, with vast resources and great in- dustrial power, will place themselves at the mercy of the armed and aggressive industrial masters of any other country. It must be admitted that no one nation can have the power to make an end of international war quite independent of other nations. Very few really thoughtful people would contend that all the national governments of all the earth could make an end of war except by the creation of a central world government with authority to investigate and to settle all ques- tions of international controversy and espe- cially including questions of international trade and international credit, and with a force [110] MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT sufficient to compel obedience to the terms of such settlements. It is quite improbable that any nation will cease to make preparation to defend its own borders until some central power shall be es- tablished, able to defend all borders, and so constituted that there will be every reason to believe that it will defend all borders. That once done, the military establishments of all the separate nations could reasonably be aban- doned, and an international army and navy less than that maintained at present by any one of the great powers would more than suffice for all the world. But no such world power can be easily estab- lished so long as the industrial masters are per- mitted to exploit the workers of their own countries and are forced to do so under com- mercial conditions which compel them all the time to seek to exploit, through interna- tional trade, the workers of other countries as well. The whole question of democracy or despot- ism in world politics is involved first of all in the triumph of industrial democracy, and, [111] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM hence, of industrial justice in the domestic poli- tics of all the great nations of the earth. Until this shall come to be, whatever may be our wishes, a military establishment of some sort in relation to foreign affairs seems to be unavoidable, just as a police department of some sort is unavoidable in the city streets. But this does not mean that while working men are earning fifty dollars a month in indus- trial employments, the army shall be made up of men willing to be employed for thirteen dollars a month. It does not mean that the army must be so organized that idleness and contempt for labor shall be instilled into the men of arms. It does not mean that camp conditions shall be maintained detrimental to the highest well- being. It does not mean that a term in the military service shall train men to regard lightly the vir- tue of women or to disqualify them, either physically or morally, for family life and for the social services of fatherhood. It does not mean that the army is to be organized and used by the industrial masters MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT to oppress labor at home under the pretense of its existence for defense against a foreign foe. It does not mean that the provision in the Constitution of the United States that "the right to keep and bear arms shall be neither abridged nor denied," shall longer be trampled under foot both by industrial despots and by the public authorities corruptly controlled by these industrial despots. It does not mean that the weapons of war shall be provided by private contract with inex- cusable private graft branded on every gun in the army and on every warship in the navy, while both are produced by alien workers em- ployed where trades unions are forbidden and where these men toil twelve hours a day, seven days in the week and all the weeks there are in the year. It does not mean that the army shall be fed by private contract on the embalmed beef of the very monopolies which conspire to produce war with a resulting mortality in the ranks of American soldiers in the time of war of four- teen dead by sanitary neglect to the one slain in actual battle. It does not mean that there is justification [113] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM for maintaining a military camp and a detach- ment of soldiers at the city border of every great industrial center in America. It does not mean that there is justification for putting every great factory in this country on the "war maps" of the army, and the build- ing of the modern factories as fortified places in the very hearts of these great industrial centers. American factories will need no defense if they treat justly the American workers. They do not deserve defense, certainly the nation cannot afford to maintain an army for their defense, if it is proposed to extend to all in- dustries the industrial hell established now by the steel mills engaged in the production of the weapons and munitions of war on a larger scale than ever before in the history of the world. The building of the Panama Canal has dem- onstrated that the army officer can be a useful citizen in time of peace. It did more than that. It demonstrated that a working force of forty- five thousand men could be organized on the basis of voluntary employment and filled with the enthusiasm of a great army struggling for [114] MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT the nation's honor and for the common good. It demonstrated that such a vast undertaking could house and feed and care for itself; that sanitary conditions could be established in the face of the greatest difficulties, that the cost of living could be enormously reduced, that the fraudulent contractor, grafter and adventurer could be excluded from any share in a great public undertaking, that the usual disorder of a frontier encampment could be avoided and schools, libraries, concerts, baths and firesides could make themselves the sole successors of the old disorderly houses, gambling resorts and drinking saloons. It would have been an easy matter to have doubled the number of workers, to have equipped all for military service, to have given certain hours to military drill, to have produced an army of the highest character and capacity and to have made an army, as well as an army officer, of some use in time of peace as well as in time of war. The reclaiming of arid lands, the storing of the flood waters, the draining of the swamps, the forcing backward of the seas from the in- valuable tide lands, the opening up of mines [115] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM and the putting of all these into a condition of highest productivity, all involve vast expendi- tures. They offer the opportunity for the em- ployment of great armies of workers, not only in bringing these natural resources into use, but in their operation afterwards. These things would make available natural resources more vast than are offered by all the lands now drenched in blood in a struggle for their pos- session in Europe. It would be a peaceful conquest at home, greater than that ever ac- complished by any war of invasion at any time in the history of man. It could be undertaken during those months of the year when there are vast armies of the unemployed. Military training could be given in all the camps. All the workers could be permanently equipped with weapons of the most modern make for their own permanent possession. All these works could be closed during the busy seasons, and the industrial army at once transferred to the wheat fields, to the orchards and to all other places where part of the year the work is too much and part of the year, not enough, for regular all the year round employment. [116] MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT All this could be undertaken and the cost of the military establishment not at all increased if the graft of the private exploiter could be excluded from this problem. And in every such undertaking the social, educational and sanitary conditions of the Panama could be reproduced. In fact, the industrial enterprises of such an army would make the army more than self- sustaining. By providing at reasonable wages for all the unemployed, by providing a means by which savings deposits could be regularly invested by them in the purchase of homes, so created as to provide for self-supporting fam- ilies, in the end, the cost of the army would entirely disappear, while years of service in such an army would not only qualify for self- employing industry but provide the very equip- ment for the maintenance of such a home. Such an army would not mean the develop- ment of brutality. Such an army would not be tempted to seek for foreign war. The fruits and the victories of peaceful conquest would be too vast and too certain to tempt the army, the army officer, or the nation to substitute destruc- [117] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM tive warfare away from home for productive enterprise at home. An army so equipped and so employed could never be used to coerce labor. The whole ques- tion of wages, hours, and the general conditions of employment would be solved for all labor, for then no private employer could keep his working force unless the wages, hours and gen- eral treatment were as good as in this industrial army whose doors would be always open for the wronged or the excluded worker from every field, and that, without the loss of citizenship or the abridgement of the elective franchise. Such an army would not be a social danger to the community where it might be stationed. Neither war babies nor ruined womanhood would follow in its wake. Such an army could not be used for the pur- poses of industrial oppression. Such an army would defend this nation against all others with a devotion never shown by any body of fighting men at any time or anywhere. Such an army would never again tempt the great private interests to foment war as a means of private advantage. [118] MILITARISM AND SELF-GOVERNMENT Until universal peace can be made possible, if there must be armies, give us such an army. Until then, "Not another dollar and not an- other man" ought to be the watchword of de- mocracy. Until the nation will safeguard itself against the misuse of the army by its enemies at home it would be better for the real democrat to take his chances with foreign foes rather than deliberately to put his neck com- pletely under the yoke of the industrial despot. Such an army would not be the tool of the despots. It would hasten the coming of indus- trial democracy as could no other single thing. But industrial democracy means the end of war because it will be the beginning of world wide justice. Political parties of some sort cannot be avoided. They must be reorganized and made the servants of the popular will, not the tools of despotism. Governments of some sort cannot be avoided. Their organization and manage- ment must be so reconstructed that the pop- ular will cannot be thwarted by obstructive methods of government procedure. [119] National defensive forces of some sort can- not be avoided as long as chaos rules the world in international affairs. The men of the armies and of the navies of all the world ought to be made useful producers in time of peace. The equipments, the munitions and the, supplies ought to be produced by public enterprises more largely benefited by maintaining peace than by resort to war, not by private monopo- lies interested in fomenting war. The effort to secure these results involves all the great problems of current politics. [120] PART III IMPROVED MACHINERY CHAPTER XI UNIVERSAL EDUCATION IN POLITICS An ignorant vote may be as disastrous as a corrupt one. Universal suffrage presupposes universal intelligence. Popular institutions and popular ignorance are utterly incompati- ble. In all countries where popular institu- tions prevail, popular education is undertaken. Where despotism prevails, general igno- rance in the community is as essential to the continuance of despotism as is general intelli- gence necessary to the success of democracy. Public schools, wherever they exist, are given support on the assumption that general intelligence is a public necessity under demo- cratic forms of government. But notwith- standing this, in these schools there are no attempts to provide for the particular study of those particular questions which may at any time come up for settlement at the ballot- box. [123] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It is everywhere insisted that education is necessary in order that there may be just and efficient political activities. While the public school is provided for the sake of intelligence in politics, the schools are teaching almost everything with the exception of politics. Frequently campaigns of education are undertaken prior to, or as a part of, the usual political campaigns. But such campaigns are usually financed by great private interests. The persons or corporations who furnish the money are usually interested in misleading, rather than in accurately informing, the public on the merits of whatever questions may be up for settlement. Most of the State Universities in America, and special departments of practically all mod- ern governments, are doing work of great value in special investigations of topics of gen- eral social and industrial importance. In con- nection with these investigations, it has be- come an established custom to publish regu- larly, or at frequent intervals, bulletins con- taining special information on whatever topics have been under investigation. These bulletins [124] UNIVERSAL EDUCATION IN POLITICS cover a great variety of topics, but they do not include expert investigations and special pub- lications on any of the topics, about which the people are called upon to vote. An exception must be made to the foregoing statement. Some of the States, where the ini- tiative and referendum prevail, do publish a small pamphlet, just prior to each election, containing controversial matter, specially pre- pared by the supporters and opponents of the special legislation so submitted to a popular vote. But the trouble with these publications is that, in actual experience, they raise more questions than they answer, and they are pub- lished so close to the holding of the elections, that there is no time for any general investi- gation on the part of the voter, as to the cor- rectness of the information given or the wisdom of the measures proposed. Another exception should be mentioned in the work of some of the State Universities in their special Bureaus of Legislation. The Bu- reau of Wisconsin University has rendered important services in gathering expert infor- mation for the use of legislators and others, interested in the improvement of the laws. It [125] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM also publishes, at irregular intervals, valuable documents on topics of legislative interest and these are mailed, at public expense, to such persons within the state as may ask for them, after the same manner as is the case with other University publications. It would seem that some means ought to be provided for placing, at all times, the widest and most accurate information possible within the reach of all the people, covering all the questions which are likely to come up for action in the elections. This information should be presented, as far as possible, without bias, and should be provided by those who are experts on the topics under consideration, and be posted directly, in regular monthly or weekly publications, to all voters. Such an undertaking could be properly made the work of a Department of Political Science, in the usual State University or, where this is not practicable, a Government Bureau could be specially organized and equipped for the purpose. Such a bulletin would not need to be a large one. It should [126] UNIVERSAL EDUCATION IN POLITICS provide for direct and expert answers to ques- tions of inquiry, covering all matters relating to politics and in which the general public would be likely to be interested. On questions of controversy, discussion should be entered upon, only on a petition of a considerable num- ber of citizens. There are many proposals which legislators would be glad to see investigated. This would be specially true of such matters as they do not yet feel prepared to vote upon. The bul- letins now published in connection with the elections, where the initiative and referendum are in operation, are only available after the laws have been drafted and within a few davs prior to the time when the citizen is called upon to decide for or against the measures already under discussion. For the sake of general intelligence it would be a wiser plan if such a measure as would be most likely to be proposed under an initiative petition should not at the first be presented to the individual citizen by a petition for its enactment into law. A more rational proced- ure would be to petition for the special investi- [127] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM gation and discussion of such proposals. Those in favor of such a measure and those in opposi- tion, each could be given certain limited space in the bulletin. This special advantage of expert informa- tion as to the facts, presented in parallel col- umns by those both for and against, could con- tinue the discussion under the direction of per- sons selected by both sides in the controversy, and each month or week the information and the argument would go directly to all voters, and so continuously until the study had been carried to that point, that public information and public sentiment would justify a petition for a vote on a definite measure involving the settlement at the ballot-box of the question in controversy, unless perchance the legislature should yield to a unanimity of sentiment, as a result of investigation and discussion, and enact the measure without a direct reference to a popular vote. Such a bulletin could be made to serve other and important purposes. It has been seen how uncertain and frequently how misleading are party platform declarations, where a multi- [128] UNIVERSAL EDUCATION IN POLITICS tude of questions as well as a multitude of can- didates are all struggling together for a hear- ing, in the midst of such confusion as makes either a fair hearing or an intelligent vote on all measures and on all candidates utterly impossible. With such a bulletin, the general public would not depend upon the dictation of great private interests, the exigencies of political parties, or the whims or personal ambitions of candidates for office in making up the issues to be determined in any given election. These bulletins could be used for announcing candi- dates and each candidate could be given an opportunity to declare himself, for or against measures so proposed, and in this way the subject matter of the questions in issue in any particular campaign would be determined by the people. The position of each candidate regarding such measures could be determined by himself. Under such an arrangement, there would be no dodging of issues, no uncertainty and no confusion as to the nature of the questions voted on, or the positions of the several candi- dates with regard to them. Such declarations [129] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM could be direct, simple and unmistakable. Party platforms would cease altogether to be a means of misleading, confusing or avoiding public measures of importance. As to the expense of such a publication, it would not need to require a very serious ex- penditure of money. It would be much less expensive than are the present campaigns, much more effective in spreading reliable in- formation on topics under controversy, and the information would reach the people in a man- ner which would protect them from being either corrupted or misled. At the beginning, such a publication could be established by an independent association of citizens, but, properly, it should belong to the Department of Public Education, and the ex- pense be paid from the public funds for a really reliable and most important public service. Such an expenditure would save to the state over and over again all it would cost in the economies resulting from an improved, more just and more efficient administration of pub- lic affairs. If such a publication were given the monopoly of the legal advertising required [130] UNIVERSAL EDUCATION IN POLITICS under the law it would at once pay all the cost of its publication and realize a considerable saving to the state. These, then, are the advantages of such a proposal : Under such an arrangement, the people of the state which would adopt and carry out such a plan of continuous state-wide study of important public measures would become the best informed and the most trustworthy of all of the people of all the states. Once this was successfully undertaken in any state, it would rapidly spread to all the states and to the na- tion in all matters of national or of interna- tional importance. Corrupt campaign funds would not only lose their power to mislead, but would lose all ex- cuse for their existence and would disappear. Legislative bodies would be delivered from the presence of the lobby, because the lobbies would lose all power to control. A hasty and ill-advised referendum would become impossible. No one would sign a peti- tion for a referendum on a measure which had not already been widely discussed. If the dis- [131] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM cussion turned against the proposal, that would be the end of it. If the discussion turned in its favor, the signatures could be easily ob- tained, and a referendum so initiated would be quite certain to carry. Party conventions, with all their possibilities for evil would became entirely without power in the matter of real platform making. In the matter of the public measures to be considered, the intrigue of the party caucus, the confusion of the party convention, the con- nivance of party committees, the betrayals of party candidates, would all of them lose their power to do harm in such a state. [132] CHAPTER XII AN ESTABLISHED CITIZENSHIP No other single thing is of so much impor- tance to one as a voter, as is his right to vote. In order to protect this right and to avoid fraud- ulent and irregular voting, systems of regis- tration have been established. Under these systems the same voter registers his citizenship over and over again at stated intervals through- out his life-time. In order to have one's vote counted, at its full value, it is necessary first to register, after- wards to vote in a primary election, and then again in a general election. This means three separate engagements on as many dates. Busy people and persons holding positions which take them away from home, find this a serious draft upon their time and attention. Large numbers of persons otherwise quali- fied are unable to vote because of such unrea- sonable requirements. Moreover, working- [133] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM men following the demands of their employ- ments find themselves in large numbers dis- qualified as voters because there are no means provided under the law by which such persons can establish and maintain a legal residence at any particular place. If such a one is able to do so and is employed at a distance from home, in order to have his vote count, he must lose the time and incur the expense of going to his home three times in order to have his wishes recorded once. The only place a working man can sell his labor is at those points where there is a demand for it. Under modern industry, this involves frequent removals with the result that large numbers of men who are most vitally interested in public affairs are unable to have any share in their management. One's membership as a shareholder in a busi- ness company or as a member of a church, fra- ternal society, labor union, or in a social or commercial club, when once established can be maintained without such needless regulations, as have been established, sometimes with the purpose and always with the result of hamper- [134] AN ESTABLISHED CITIZENSHIP ing one's right to be heard as a member of the civic community. One's membership in society and his right to vote as a member of society ought to be established in such a way that when once established it should stand for all time without further notice or attention on his own part, and certainly without the fre- quent repetition of its registration. Great pains have been taken in the registra- tion and in the preservation of the books of registration covering titles to real estate. It would seem that each county could pro- vide for a registration of one's citizenship after the same manner as deeds are registered, or recorded, and when once so recorded, the rec- ord should stand without further amendment or repetition until the rights thereunder should terminate. Just as land is specifically described in such registrations in order that each plot may be recorded with a description which will not over- lap or be overlapped by any like description of other tracts, so this registration of the indi- vidual voter, on his coming of age, or on his desire to establish his first residence as a voter [135] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM in a particular place, could include the signa- ture of the voter, his age, occupation, nation- ality, height, weight, color of his eyes, and his photograph. He could be given a card certificate of citi- zenship containing a duplicate of the matter recorded, and a further copy could be made and be recorded and preserved at the state capital. There are many reasons for filing a further duplicate at the national capital, but his rights as a citizen in any particular state would be sufficiently guarded without such a national registration, desirable as that would be for other reasons. On the removal of one's citizenship to some other precinct or county in the state, the old registration could be cancelled before a new one would be made possible. On establishing his citizenship in any other state, or on the death of the voter, that fact should be properly certified and should be recorded on the regis- ters, both in his own county and at the capital. A necessary part of every death and burial certificate should be this certificate of citizen- ship attached to, and made a part of, this final record of every citizen and the name removed [136] from the voters' list. But so long as a regis- tration stands, the voter should never be re- quired again to register his citizenship, or be required to prove his right to vote by any other means than by the showing of his certificate and thereby establishing his identity. At elections the county officers would furnish to each precinct the registrations for that pre- cinct, and when a voter would present his vote he would present also his duplicate certificate of registration, which would at once be com- pared with the duplicate records and the two being found descriptive of the voter his right to vote would be established. In connection with such a system of regis- tration, births and deaths would be regularly certified and certificates regularly entered as a necessary part of the personal record of the citizenship of each person so entered on the public register. In this way all one's rights as a citizen would be provided for in the most simple and direct manner. Therefore, there would be every rea- son for enacting and enforcing very severe penalties for all efforts to duplicate registra- tions, to falsify records, to make false reports, [137] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM or to mutilate or destroy any such public rec- ords. The penalty should be equally severe for voting in one state while holding an uncan- celled certificate of citizenship in any other. The advantages of this system of registra- tion are very many. In some countries they have old-age pensions. In all countries old-age pensions are sure to be established at an early date. Such a record of citizenship will be most valuable in securing one's right to participate in their benefits. The problem of the unemployed is each year becoming more serious. Such a certificate of citizenship would be, and ought to be, entitled to special consideration in arranging for em- ployment or for any other necessary provision which society may make for the individual use and benefit of those who are citizens. In some municipalities, the income from publicly owned forests is now paying all pub- lic charges and an annual dividend to the citi- zens besides. Publicly owned ground rents and publicly owned industrial and social serv- ices will, at an early day, make all governments dividend paying bodies, as against tax-gather- [138] AN ESTABLISHED CITIZENSHIP ing agencies. Then this certificate of citizen- ship will have the same value as a stock certifi- cate in a private company. It will be one's certificate of his single equal share in the great business body called the state by virtue of which he will be heard in its affairs and will share in its benefits. He will have a stake in his country. Finally, such a registration would be so com- plete that one's right as a voter would be fully protected while no one could repeatedly vote at the same place or at different places at the same elections, or impersonate those either absent or dead, and it would make unnecessary all loss of time and all expenses incurred in the frequent and unnecessary registrations which now prevail. [139] CHAPTER XIII A SHAKE IN THE GOVERNMENT BY ALL THE GOVERNED In the later days of barbarism, the kings fre- quently submitted questions of public impor- tance to the tribesmen. The tribesmen had an equal opportunity to vote "Yes" or "No" on the questions submitted. It has been shown in another place that under current politics the modern voter is little more than a servant of a political machine which determines for him what the issues shall be in any given election. All that he can do is to vote "Yes" or "No" on the questions sub- mitted, and usually he must do that with the certain knowledge that the modern king is the personal agent of some private monopoly, and, hence, the spokesman of a corrupt machine. In every parliamentary body, the right to make motions, to propose resolutions, that is, to share in the raising of questions as well as to [140] A SHARE IN THE GOVERNMENT share in the settling of them, is of great importance. The machinery of self-government will not be complete until groups of citizens can have a voice in the management of their own affairs by raising questions which to them seem impor- tant without waiting for the consent of any party organization, or the cooperation of any political machine of any sort. It is unquestionably true that the general public is frequently anxious that certain things shall be done, while a corrupt machine is able to postpone the public hearing and in so doing perpetuate the doing of a wrong thing under the pretense of doing nothing at all. In those countries where the initiative has been estab- lished this delay is at once made impossible. The friends of such a measure may write the law in the form in which they wish it enacted and, on securing a certain number of signa- tures, say five percent of the total votes in the previous general election, the measure must be submitted to a direct vote of the people and, in that manner, may be enacted immediately into law. [141] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM The referendum is veiy closely related and should be treated in connection with the initia- tive. This is a provision that whenever a legis- lative body shall enact any measure into law, should a petition be filed after the same manner as in proposing a new measure and within a fixed period, then the legislative enactment is not to become law until a public vote is taken. If the majority vote shall confirm the act of the legislature, the measure becomes a law, otherwise it has been defeated by popular vote. The advantages of the initiative and the ref- erendum are many and important : 1. Under it, no legislative machine can long obstruct the public will. 2. No legislative machine can betray the public good in behalf of private interests by enacting vicious legislation, because any at- tempt in that direction will be overtaken by referring such matters to a public vote. 8. No legislative machine can delay progress by refusing action on matters of importance because under the initiative any such measure can be forced to a vote entirely independent of [142] A SHARE IN THE GOVERNMENT great private interests, and in spite of their corrupting influence in legislative bodies. 4. All measures so presented are presented entirely independent of any other measure so that a citizen can vote for what he wants on one matter, without being compelled to vote for what he does not want on something else. 5. All measures so presented are presented entirely independent of all candidates for office so that a citizen can vote for what he wants on a public measure without being required to vote for a candidate whom he does not want. 6. The fruits of a victory under a refer- endum vote cannot easily be made into political capital for the benefit of a partisan machine. It is usually provided that the referendum shall not apply to measures of urgent and immediate importance. Where such laws exist they should be amended and when new laws of the sort are enacted, they should provide that laws declared to be urgent should be limited solely to measures involving disastrous floods, fires, earthquakes, contagion or plague, and should not involve property rights, the confer- ring of franchises, the usual appropriations of [143] public funds, or in any way affect the regular and, permanent necessities of society. It should further provide that such acts as are deemed to be of urgent and immediate importance within these limitations should go into operation at once, but should be subject to referendum after the same manner as other laws, and on a refer- endum being carried against them, they should be declared repealed. The initiative and referendum should be se- cured in the constitution and the constitu- tional amendment by which it is established should contain all provisions for carrying it out. It should also provide that no repealing law could be enacted or its operation be in any way interfered with or modified except by an initia- tive petition and a majority vote of the people. It is claimed that under such an arrangement unwise and ill-considered laws will be presented and public prejudice appealed to for securing their enactment through the initiative. The answer is that where the initiative is in opera- tion, the necessity for its use is less frequent than would reasonably be expected in consid- eration of the long years of political obstruc- [144] A SHARE IN THE GOVERNMENT tion which have everywhere preceded its adop- tion. Legislative bodies which know that cer- tain measures can be initiated will have ample opportunity for anticipating the public demand and for enacting the measures desired without haste, without lack of consideration, and in proper form. It is only when the legislative body fails or refuses to act in any matter that the initiative becomes necessary. If the preliminary discussion of all such measures is provided for, as has been proposed above through a monthly or weekly bulletin, ill- considered and undesirable measures will have no chance for doing the harm anticipated. As to prejudice, it may be said that since it is pro- posed to provide full and exact information on all such questions, this is the very process by which prejudice will cease to be a factor and intelligent public interest become the only mas- ter of the situation. But there are questions of such a nature that the interests controlling the minority will never consent to obey the majority unless compelled to do so by the officers of the state. It will be shown in another place that in that event, and [145] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM covering most matters, the individual officer can be controlled through the power of the public recall and in that way administrative obedience can be secured. But this cannot reach those questions of such serious controversy that the opposition will yield only to a show of force. In every such instance, the majorities back of the successful referendums must secure direct control of the administration of the measures adopted by them and hence, be in a position to compel the obedience of rebellious minorities. That makes necessary the control of a polit- ical party which in turn will administer the state and so secure an effective administration of the disputed measures. It will sometimes occur that old parties can- not be captured, and new organizations must be created for such a purpose. It has been shown by actual experience that the most ef- fective manner of making the beginning in the creation of a new party is by a movement to initiate a party, very much corresponding to the initiation of a new law. When a new party, organized by only a few people and making battle for some hotly disputed position is [146] A SHARE IN THE GOVERNMENT undertaken, it must necessarily meet with many obstacles and, incidentally, may become the occasion of public harm. It may withdraw to the ranks of a hopeless minority the very persons who otherwise might cast a favorable and controlling vote on other and important measures. Society can ill af- ford to lose the voice and vote of those so con- scientious and so devoted to the public welfare as to be personally willing to be counted in a hopeless minority for the sake of a distant good, while they possess the power to be a determining factor in a battle for what may be a less but an immediate social advan- tage. There is no good reason why the majority which can adopt a measure by a referendum cannot also elect the public officers who must be depepded on to make effective its adminis- tration. It cannot be because of a lack of public con- viction as to the wisdom of such a measure that such independent parties fail, because the ma- jority is already voting for, or is ready to vote for, the measure under the referendum. It must be because of a lack of confidence on the [147] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM part of the many in the possibility of the elec- tion of such new party candidates. There can be no other reason why popular measures carried by great majorities are so frequently betrayed in their administration, and new parties which champion these popular measures are defeated by the very voters who are themselves in favor of these measures. It is not an unusual thing, in the organiza- tion of a business company to carry on an en- terprise which cannot be successfully under- taken without a given amount of capital, to accept subscriptions to its stock with the con- dition that no subscriptions are to be in force until all, or enough to render the venture a safe one, has been subscribed. In fact, to collect and to expend a thousand dollars in an enterprise requiring a million, with no assurance that the other nine hundred ninety-nine thousand would be forthcoming could be little less than criminal carelessness. The Prohibitionists, the Socialists, and those in the labor parties have made a life-long battle for measures which on their merits command the confidence of the majority. But these par- [148] A SHARE IN THE GOVERNMENT ties are able to command only small minorities, while the parties which can command majori- ties continuously betray the public good, as re- lated to the interests involved in these very measures. It would be no reflection on the practicabil- ity of a business requiring a million to float it, to refuse to expend a thousand until all "was in sight." In the same way it is not held by most men to be a betrayal of temperance, of economic justice, or of the rights of labor, to refuse to invest their ballots in undertakings where majorities only can control, until tlie majority "is in sight." In securing the submission of a law under the initiative and the referendum, it is done only on the joint petition of some certain percentage of all of the voters. The assumption is that a measure which can secure, say a ten percent support on a petition, has a fighting chance for a majority in an actual election, and experi- ence justifies that conclusion. Is it not worth while to consider whether the initiation of a new party could not be under- taken in a similar manner? [149] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It is everywhere admitted that a party which could secure a regular and contributing party membership equal to ten percent of the total vote in any city, state, or nation, would have at once a fighting chance to take control. It would, moreover, be financed through its mem- bership in such a way that it would not be de- pendent for its existence on any great private interests whatsoever. Then why insist on spending the thousand until the million is in sight? Why not make a battle for a party mem- bership and deliberately stay off the ballot in any city, state, or in the nation, until at least ten percent of the voters are in the party organization? With such a member- ship, and standing for a measure which is able to command a majority support on its merits, such a party could at once force a division of all the voters along the line of the interests involved in the measure pro- posed. To nominate candidates before this previous organization is secured cannot secure the end desired. It does effectively disfranchise those who vote for such minority parties, and it [150] A SHARE IN THE GOVERNMENT makes more difficult the building up of the membership to a point where victory for the new measures and the new party to administer and to enforce these measures becomes a possi- bility. The governed have a right to a share in the government which governs them. There is not only the right, but there is the corresponding duty to share in the government. Those in the minority parties have their opinions and second choices concerning the men and measures of other parties. If minority parties would not nominate until they first made their organiza- tion strong by at least a ten percent member- ship and, in the meantime, would leave their members free to vote for second choices among other candidates, they would be a determining factor at once in many current elections, and would all the sooner win the strength both to name and to elect their own candidates. In that way, they would all the sooner secure the support of a party organization for their own proposals, and that a party created for the ex- press purpose of providing not only for their adoption but for their effective administration as well. [151] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It may be said then : 1. That in all ordinary questions of legisla- tion, the initiative and the referendum make possible the doing of the public will. 2. That in cases where the beaten minority refuses to surrender, the recall can ordinarily enforce conformity to the public will, as will be shown in the succeeding chapter. 3. That in cases where the subject of dis- pute is such that a complete division of society is inevitable, the political party arises as the organized champion of one side in the contro- versy and as the last remaining alternative next preceding civil war. In fact, it is at this point where the political party becomes both inevi- table and desirable. 4. That to render such a service under such circumstances is the only excuse for the exist- ence of a political party. If under such cir- cumstances the political party becomes indis- pensable, then to be a partisan in such a party becomes the highest virtue. To be a partisan under any other circumstances is to forget the larger good of all for the factional advantage of a part, and hence, is a betrayal of the common good. [152] A SHARE IN THE GOVERNMENT 5. That when old parties cannot be reorgan- ized to undertake the newer tasks, and a new party must be created, the principle of the ini- tiative may be successfully applied by secur- ing a membership in the party equal to at least a tenth of all the voters before attempting the nomination of candidates. In that way, a new party can preserve the rights of its members to second choice votes, and so have important powers even during the days of its own small strength, and can all the quicker secure the membership which will force the complete division of the country on new measures which are of such a nature that they can be successfully adopted and administered only by a new party. The initiative and referendum then, is seen to be the most effective of all recent devices for escaping from the grasp of despotic powers. They are directly and entirely a movement to- wards democracy. They may be used effect- ively in the initiation of a new party as well as a new law. As the number of states which adopt them and as the details of their opera- [153] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM tion arejperfected, they are sure to be extended to national and finally to international matters and self-government will at last be made a reality everywhere and all despotic institutions will utterly disappear. [154] CHAPTER XIV OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY ENFORCED Quite apart from the measures to be adopted and administered in the carrying on of public affairs, is the question of the fidelity and effi- ciency of those in office. It has been seen that the political machinery of a free state must provide for universal intel- ligence concerning public matters, an estab- lished and certain citizenship for all the mem- bers of society and methods of organization, such that all citizens shall be assured a voice not only in settling questions when they are once up for settlement, but in bringing up new questions for settlement. There is the further need of some more effec- tive method of securing the selection and con- trol of the wisest and most capable for the places of responsibility in the public service, and for the removal of those who shall prove themselves faithless or incapable. [155] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM In the solving of this problem there is in- volved the consideration of the following: 1. The nomination of candidates, (1) by a party convention, (2) by a party referendum, (3) by a party primary, or (4) by a non-parti- san petition. 2. The voting for candidates, ( 1 ) by a plu- rality, (2) by a majority with a second elec- tion if found necessary, to secure a majority vote, or (3) by preferential voting. 3. Proportional representation. 4. Accurate and honest election returns, (1) by the secret ballot and fair count, or (2) by the voting machine. 5. The proper control of those in office, (1) by a party committee, ( 2 ) by a legislative com- mittee, (3) by a legislative caucus, (4) by a party referendum, or (5) by a public recall. 6. The short ballot. 1. As to the nomination of candidates. (1) It has already been seen that nominations se- cured through political party conventions are most unsatisfactory and it is not deemed neces- sary to give that method of nomination any fur- ther consideration than to mention it in order [156] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY that it may be rejected. (2) As to nomina- tions by party referendum, it would seem to be a very great improvement over any conven- tion method that could possibly be adopted. (3) As to nomination by a party primary, that is only a regularly established method of hold- ing a party referendum under authorities and safeguards established by law. (4) As to nomination by non-partisan petition, as this is a new proposal it would seem to be entitled to further consideration. It has been said in another place that diffi- cult as it is to create a new political party when it is needed, it is even more difficult to escape from it when it can no longer serve a useful purpose. It has also been shown that the old political parties in the United States have fallen under the control of corrupt political machines, and are instruments in the mislead- ing of the people and in the betrayal of the public good. One of the great difficulties in creating a new political party is found in persuading people to abandon old parties when no good reason can be given for their further existence. Observation justifies the statement that the DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM usual voter will never vote for a new political party as long as he can find anything in it which he does not approve, but he will continue to vote for an old political party as long as he can find anything in it which he does approve. If the new organization is faultless in every re- spect, except in some matter of minor impor- tance and if at the same time the old party is wrong in every particular of serious concern and can be approved of only for some reason entitled only to the slightest consideration, the usual voter stands by his earlier political alliance. So far as the non-partisan petition can as- sist, as it certainly does assist, in delivering men from the superstitions and prejudices which bind them to out-worn and useless po- litical organizations, so far it is to be approved. Political parties with a real mission are not created merely by party names, nor their exist- ence maintained simply by the survival of party catch words, party labels, or party prejudices. Real political parties arise as the represen- tatives of conflicting economic interests of the most serious importance. Nominations made [158] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY by non-partisan petitions cannot remove these economic causes. Candidates so presented cannot so successfully avoid real issues of im- portance as can the old style parties with their corrupt machinery, their conventions of con- fusion and disorder, their badges, their ban- ners and their rallying cries. It is unquestionably true that nominations by referendums or primaries are a great ad- vance over the old conventions, and, finally, that nominations by non-partisan petitions, where all party labels are excluded, may ren- der so great a service in delivering voters from the narrowness and prejudice of out-worn po- litical organizations as to altogether more than justify any loss which could arise through the disappearance of partisan labels. This is es- pecially so because of the fact that with the disappearance of partisan labels, only public questions can remain over which divisions at the ballot box can possibly arise. 2. As to the methods of voting for candi- dates and of determining elections. (1) It must be said that where there are several candidates for the same office and no [159] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM one of them gets the majority, to give the elec- tion to the one having the largest vote, though his vote is less than a majority of the votes polled, is a direct surrender to minority con- trol and, as frequently occurs, leads to the adoption of policies and measures entirely con- trary both to the public interest and to the public judgment. (2) If the majority is to elect, and there are only two candidates for the same office, the way is easy, but if the majority is to control and there are more than two candidates, with none of them having a majority over all the rest, then a second election in which some of the competing candidates in the first are dropped from the ballot is usually adopted. Most frequently all are dropped except the two with the highest votes. Then those whose candidates do not reappear in the second elec- tion may by their second choice votes deter- mine which of the other candidates shall be given the office. The objection to this method of election is that it immediately leads to bargaining be- tween candidates, to fusion arrangements be- tween campaign committees, and to the de- [160] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY moralization of all the political parties con- cerned. When in the second election the defeated candidates, or the campaign committees of the parties whose candidates no longer appear, are permitted to give public endorsement to one or the other of the remaining candidates, it must be admitted that every temptation is of- fered for corrupt bargaining and, in the long run, the demoralization of all parties con- cerned is very difficult to avoid. An endorsement of one or the other of the remaining candidates by a party convention, or even by a party referendum of the party whose candidate does not get a place on the final ballot, has been suggested. But the trou- ble with this is that sinister motives would be at work to improperly influence such a con- vention or referendum and the further trou- ble that while a party member may obey the law of the party as to its own candidates, most voters would refuse to be instructed as to the candidates of other parties. The only remaining proposal is that those voters who vote for candidates in the primary whose names fail to appear on the final ballot [161] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM shall refrain from voting at all in the final election. But the trouble with this is, that actual experience demonstrates that the most sincere and active of the members of any such party will not refrain from voting their sec- ond choice when the candidate of their own party is not on the final ballot or when, for any reason, their own party is without a can- didate. For the reason that reasonable voters will vote their second choice anyway and for the further reason that the common good, under democratic control, justly requires the record- ing of that second choice judgment of minor- ity parties and, inasmuch as any effort to con- trol these second choices in such elections can lead only to corruption and confusion, the wiser policy is to leave to each citizen his own second choice of candidates and to leave his right to his second choice vote unchallenged. Such an arrangement would have the fur- ther advantage that just because the remain- ing candidates could not bargain with com- mittees or mislead conventions or interfere with a referendum in the fight for endorsement, they would be obliged to make their fight by [162] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY direct concessions to the measures supported by minority parties as the only way by which they could secure majorities in the final elec- tions. (3) There remains for consideration only the method known as preferential voting. By this method, all voters vote for all of the can- didates submitted in the order of their choice, marking each name "First," "Second," "Third," etc., in accordance with their prefer- ences. If any one of the candidates has a ma- jority over all others, he is declared elected. If, however, no candidate is given a major- ity, then the candidate having the smallest vote is dropped from the list and the second choices on those ballots which had voted "First choice" for the candidate whose name is now dropped, have their second choices counted among the remaining candidates. This process of dropping the name with fewest votes is continued until some one of the remaining candidates shall have secured a majority of either first, second, or third choices. The advantages of this method of voting are very many. All elections under it are by [163] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM majority vote. Ail voters under this arrange- ment may freely vote their first choice with the certainty that if no one of the candidates is given a majority on the first count, their sec- ond choices will be sure to be counted, and in this manner the advantages of the first and second, and even a third choice, are made pos- sible without any possibility of intervening bargains or corrupt practices of any sort. Besides this, it gives each voter an oppor- tunity to give full expression to his own wishes or convictions on the whole field of possible political action. He may choose and be ready to support with very great earnestness, a can- didate representing a cause to which only a small portion of his neighbors are ready to give their support. In that case, however, he would still have a preference between remaining can- didates. He owes it to himself to use all the just powers of his citizenship, and his country is entitled to the benefit of his further choice. Under the preferential method of voting, all this is possible. It is possible without any sec- ond election. The trouble and expense of sec- ond elections are avoided. Second and third and fourth choice votes are possible and all [164] questions of endorsements, or of bargains, or of the corruption or betrayal of minority par- ties are also avoided. For these reasons, it would seem to be the most rational and effective method of securing the best results in all elections. 3. As to proportional representation in legislative bodies such as town councils, coun- ty supervisors, state legislatures, and the mem- bers of congress the usual method is to elect delegates or representatives from each of sev- eral election districts, as wards, assembly dis- tricts, townships and congressional districts, and within each of these districts to elect but one person. Proportional representation would create larger subdivisions, in each of which several members of these bodies would be elected. The voting then would take place with the ballots marked after the same manner as under pref- erential voting. The total number of votes polled would be divided by the number of rep- resentatives to be elected from the district, plus one that is, if five members were to be elected, the number of votes polled would be [165] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM divided by six and the quotient so obtained would determine the number of votes neces- sary for any candidate in order to be declared elected. Then all first choices would be counted in the same manner as under preferential voting. All those who secured first choice votes equal to that required number, would be declared elected. The votes polled for any such suc- cessful candidate in excess of the required number, would immediately be counted for their second choices on the remaining candi- dates. If this should secure a sufficient num- ber for any one of the remaining candidates to give him the number required, he would be de- clared elected, and any surplus of votes re- maining of his second choice votes would be counted for the names below. When there would be no longer a remaining surplus from successful candidates, the name having the lowest vote in the list would be dropped, and his second choices counted among the still re- maining candidates, after the same manner until five candidates would have been chosen. The arguments in behalf of this method of electing members of legislative bodies are that [166] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY minority parties, in this way, will be given rep- resentation in the legislative bodies in propor- tion to their numbers, and that group interests of any sort existing in the community may thus be easily and certainly given expression in the governing bodies. It is certain, that, under the organization of political parties by industrial groups, as is pro- posed in Chapter XV, proportional represen- tation would greatly hasten industrial repre- sentation in the administration of public affairs. 4. As to accurate and honest election re- turns. Anything that can be done to guarantee the purity of the ballot box certainly ought to be done. The introduction of the Australian bal- lot that is, the large ballot sheet with the names of all candidates printed on the official list, and with secrecy in its marking guaran- teed, has been of incalculable value in Ameri- can elections, and throughout the world, where- ever it has been adopted. But the voting ma- chine, recently invented, and coming quite rapidly into general use, gives a greater guar- [167] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM antee for absolute secrecy, absolute accuracy in the count, and a return sheet so completely protected that it is practically fraud-proof in making the returns. Besides, no ballot is necessary further than a list for the convenience of the voters in mak- ing up the names for their own direction in using the machine. The cost of printing the ballots and the end- less task involved in their counting and the cer- tainty established by all the records of official recounts that accuracy in the counting of bal- lots is practically impossible, all together offer the strongest reasons why the voting machine should be everywhere adopted. The initial ex- pense in introducing the machine is not to be compared with the permanent economies re- sulting from its use, while the advantages of speedy returns, accurate counting and abso- lute secrecy are of the gravest importance. 5. As to the proper control of those once elected to office. (1) This has usually been undertaken by the party executive committee. The power of the committee to promote or to ruin the man [168] in office has been depended upon to enforce its control. But it has been frequently the case that in the interest of the public good, the party committee was more in need of guidance than was the public officer whom it sought to control. (2) It has been proposed that this author- ity, always unwisely vested in the executive committee of a party, should be transferred to a special committee to be known as a legis- lative or advisory committee, and which is to assume control of public officers elected by the party. If the men elected to office are not wise enough to carry on their own work as public officers, and committeemen can be found, by the same party which elected these men to of- fice, who will be wise enough to do so, then the committeemen should have been elected to the public office in the first place. The intervention of a committee between the general public and a public officer, when once elected, with authority to control his ac- tion without the possibility of being on the ground and of having personal information as to whatever exigencies may arise, not only has [169] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM the force of a vote of no confidence in the pub- lic officer, it has the force of a vote of confi- dence in an unofficial group who are neces- sarily so related to the duties of the office that they cannot possibly have in hand the infor- mation necessary for wise and effective guid- ance. (3) As to the legislative caucus. In legis- lative bodies, it is a long-established practice that the representatives of a party, and some- times those interested in a measure, regardless of party, meet in a regular or special meeting known as a "legislative caucus." There has been much discussion over the propriety of these meetings and concerning the powers which they exercise. But the fact is, that in the battle for measures and policies in such bodies, the contending forces must be given direction in some way. If the party cau- cus is to be abandoned, there would then re- main no possible way by which party pledges could be made good, and the party's action and responsibility be protected from the personal weakness of its members or the corrupting power of the "party boss" and the sinister in- terests which usually control the "party boss." [170] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY That a legislator in the promotion of any certain measure should be guided in the details of its provisions and in the tactics of the bat- tle for its adoption by his associates, who are also committed to its support, would seem to be the method most likely to be helpful and least exposed to the dangers of unwise or dis- honest action on the part of its supposed sup- porters. Anyway, it is necessarily a choice between the "party boss," or the "party caucus," or an utterly unorganized and chaotic mob on the one side, as against a solid unit on the other, for the enemies of the public good "know their master's voice" and forever heed its call. (4) It is further proposed that when a pub- lic officer shall prove unsatisfactory to a party which supported his candidacy, that in that case, he shall be subject to recall by a referen- dum to the party which elected him or by the act of his party's executive. The objection to this is that he was elected by a majority vote as against the rest of the community, but he is to be instructed by a party committee or by a majority vote within the party which could never be much more DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM than one-fourth of the total vote of the com- munity, and, frequently, would be only the smallest fraction of the persons actually con- cerned. Public officers have been more fre- quently corrupted by the great private inter- ests controlling committees which control the officers, than by directly corrupting the offi- cers themselves. Any such committee control, it has been agreed, is most dangerous. But any power on the part of a majority of the members of a party to displace a public offi- cer, once he has been elected by a majority of the whole community, is a direct departure from majority rule, for while only a majority can elect to office, it still gives an insignificant minority the power to discharge a public offi- cer, who should be elected and controlled, not by small minorities, but by the majority of the whole community. (5) This leads us to the one and only re- maining method for controlling those in office, that is, through the public recall. In a popular government it is always possi- ble to elect men to office who would better be left in private life. It is true that such an un- fortunate officer may be removed at the end [172] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY of his term by the election of a successor, bet- ter able to command the public confidence, but that does not deliver society from the harm such a public officer may do during his term of office. Again, a scandalous administration on the part of some one man frequently imperils the tenure of office of others elected by the same party, and whose services are entirely satisfac- tory. Under our current tenure of office, even in the regular elections, there is no way of reaching such a faithless officer without at the same time imperiling the positions of others. Again, such an unfortunate election may be, and frequently is, an occasion by which great public interests are made to suffer serious loss by measures brought into force through the betrayal of the public good, by those temporar- ily in power. If the public interests are to be delivered from the dangers of such a situation, it is not only necessary to be able to reach each public measure on its merits, regardless of public officials, but it is equally necessary to be able to reach all public officials, each on his own merits, regardless of public measures. [173] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM The means by which that may be accomp- lished is by arranging that by a general peti- tion, signed at any time by a reasonable por- tion of the community, after the same manner as in the referendum, an election may be called, retiring at once such a faithless public servant and electing in his place a successor, who will obey the public will. The wisdom of the public recall of a faithless official has been conceded by some, and then the objection made that it ought not to apply to judges in the courts of law. This objection is based on the obvious fact that the majority of the voters in the com- munity cannot possibly be versed in the intrica- cies of the law and are therefore incapable of a just judgment on the actions of a judge in his rulings in the court, or on his decisions as to the meaning of the law. But this is only the same old objection against popular rule. It has been seen that the dangers of popular rule are many, but that they are never so great as is fixed, arbi- trary, irresponsible and despotic power vested in any way in anyone, be he an industrial mas- [174] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY ter, a party boss, a military lord, a court judge, a president, king or kaiser. It is quite likely, however, that the reversal of a court decision would be found to be more effective than the recall of the judges. This is true for the same reason that it is easier to re- verse the action of a legislative body on some particular law than it would be to recall from office all those who had voted for the objection- able measure. But the wiser arrangement still would be to provide for either method of pro- cedure and in that way under the form of law the final authority in government is made, be- yond all power to prevent it, the will of the majority. 6. The short ballot. There are three great tasks in the adminis- tration of public affairs. One is the fixing of the things to be undertaken and the general policies which are to prevail. This should be done by the majority vote and hence, must be done in the elections. The next is the work- ing out of these general purposes and policies in their details in the legislative and adminis- trative activities of the government. And, [175] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM finally, there is the task of actually organiz- ing and carrying on the work of doing the things so agreed upon. In all this the greatest wisdom and efficiency demands that the persons who determine the details of legislation and of administrative policies should be representative of all the great social interests concerned. But repre- sentation of those interests ought not to be duplicated over and over again with a needless multiplication of public officials, only to con- fuse the situation. In the execution of these undertakings, the call is solely for efficient management. Di- vided council and divided responsibility both tend to inefficiency. The movement for the short ballot is an ef- fort to reduce the number of elected officials, to centralize and definitely fix responsibility, to promote efficiency in any executive service by promotion in the service, and to secure all the advantages of trained and capable workers under long time engagements. Against this most sensible proposal it is ob- jected that it is not democratic. How it is understood to be especially democratic to elect [176] OFFICIAL FIDELITY AND EFFICIENCY three men to do what one can better do, or to elect many men to different parts of a simple task, so as to encourage inefficiency in the do- ing of the people's work, has never been explained. But, it is urged again, that this policy of the short ballot leads to an office holding class, that offices must be passed around, that every- body must be given a chance. It is utterly impossible to elect everybody to a public office. It is not impossible to pro- vide employment for all who care to be of service, and so to organize industry as to make certain one's promotion for efficiency. Ra- tional opportunity, for such all-the-time em- ployment must be provided, but to try to do this by cumbering up the ballot with direct elections to all sorts of public positions in the routine public service, can in no way help in the promotion of such a purpose, nor can it in any way advance the interests of democracy. Municipal, state, national and international elective offices should be numerous enough to enable the people, with the aid of the initiative, the referendum and the recall, always to be DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM able to determine the things to be undertaken and the general policies to be adopted. To attempt more than this, by direct elec- tion, is only to do violence to the simplest prin- ciple of effective organization, while under the pretense of being democratic, real democracy is made impossible. The contention so often made that democ- racy and efficiency are not possible is absurd. The citing of the obstructive forms of party organization and the obstructive forms of gov- ernment procedure in this country as instances of democratic failure, is not justified by the facts. This country is controlled by the great pri- vate interests, every one of which is an indus- trial despotism. The obstructive forms of party organization and the obstructive forms of government procedure are both the work of the despotic powers of monopolized indus- try. They are still in the mastery not because of democracy, but for the lack of democracy. No good can be accomplished by any sug- gested concessions to autocracy. All that is needed is the application of common sense [178] measures for discovering, stating and enforc- ing the public will as the supreme authority in the state. From all the foregoing it is seen that fidelity and efficiency in public office can be best se- cured by the initiative and the referendum, by nominations by petition, by preferential vot- ing, by proportional representation, by the use of the voting machine in the place of the printed ballot, by the public recall and with the short ballot. [179] CHAPTER XV THE INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION OF POLITICAL PARTIES It has been seen in Chapter Eight how, through the unofficial caucus, the unwieldy and disorderly conventions, the machine-made committees and their corruptly chosen candi- dates, political parties are used to obstruct the public will, and as instruments in the hands of private interests in the doing of public harm. It has been seen in Chapter Seven that the real occasion for the existence of political par- ties is the existence of the great conflicting in- terests which these parties are created to rep- resent in the battle of these interests for the control and use of the public power. If the political party is to be made a means of real service in the promotion of the public good, then some means must be devised by which each party and the committees which represent and control each party can be made directly [180] INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION answerable to the great economic interests which are the occasion for its existence. The great interests do now control the par- ties which they use in their own behalf. This ought to be made an open and unmistakable control and it ought to extend to all interests and to apply to all parties. This can be done by making those in the industrial groups, not those in the geographical districts, the organic units of which the parties are com- posed. Now the great private monopolies send their delegates to the conventions and put their men in control of the committees, but they do it in the name of wards, cities, counties or states. Should they send them as directly and openly chosen by the steel, copper, coal, railway or banking corporations, so that their spokesmen would be openly known for what they really are, it would make an end of their power at once. What a revolution it would cause if, in a national convention of republicans or demo- crats the badges and banners of the states should be removed and each delegate should [181] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM be given in open display the badges of the private monopolies he really stands for. It is only by hiding the fact as to whom they really represent that corrupt political ma- chines are able to continue their control of public affairs. The great private monopolies have everything to gain by keeping their in- dustrial group control of the country out of sight. But the useful people lose all by not openly organizing for political purposes along the line of their great industrial group interests. Remember that men should vote together only because they have interests together. Re- member that political parties have no excuse for their existence except as they represent these great collective interests. What are the great collective interests of most serious concern to the people and con- cerning which the control of the government in their behalf is of the gravest importance? Only a little while ago all progressive coun- tries were engaged in a great conflict over lo- cal self-government. It was justly contended that only those who were concerned in the af- [182] INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION fairs of a city, a county, or a state, should have voice in its affairs. But why was this contention made? There is but one answer. It was because those who lived in a city, county or state would be best informed as to its needs and most vitally con- cerned in its welfare. But since the building of the American states there have grown up in this country great group interests of more vital concern than any which now prevail within any certain geographical subdivisions of the country. During the last fifty years the most marked thing in the productive processes by which the means of existence are provided, in the organ- izations of business bodies, in the organizations of labor, and in the activities of the modern state, has been the appearance and rapid growth of the great industrial or occupational group interests. Consider the processes of production. Fifty years ago the world's work was done, in the main, by each worker, employing himself a part of the time in many lines of work. The same man was a farmer, a carpenter, a stone [183] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM mason, a tanner, a shoemaker, a blacksmith, a fuel producer, and a transport worker. A part of the time he worked on each of many differ- ent kinds of tasks. During the last fifty years more than fifty great private industries, all of which have grown into great private monopolies, have been developed out of lines of work which had before been carried on by self-employed men in small shops of their own, in any one of which they were employed only small portions of the time. Consider the new forms of business organ- ization. Formerly, the prosperous, self-em- ployed producers would not only be working a part of the time at many tasks but they were owners as individuals or as partners in many lines of business. Now the lines of business organization have been extended along the lines of these great industrial or occupational group develop- ments. Business companies are mining com- panies, railway companies, lumber companies, hardware companies, cotton or woolen manu- facturing companies, and so on to the end of the list of all the great business undertakings. [184] INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION Consider how the organizations of labor are following the same lines in the industrial grouping of the workers. The whole trend of the labor world is more and more toward the consolidation of all the workers in any indus- try, as mining, building, printing, manufactur- ing or farming, into great consolidated or federated bodies. But the same thing is going on in the de- velopment of the modern state. In the cabi- net of George Washington, there were but four members and every one of them had du- ties relating to the government income, to de- fense or to the administration of the laws. Not one of them was related to industrial or commercial group interests of any sort. Of the five new members added since then to the official family of the President of the United States, all of them have duties directly related to some industrial group, or to some social service. There is no doubt that new departments will be added speedily. A sec- retary of mines and mining, of transportation, of manufactures, of public health, of educa- tion, are quite sure to be added. [185] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM But this only indicates in the smallest way the great activities of the government in the industry and commerce of the nation. In the various departments there are bureaus, or sub- divisions of the public service directly relating the administrative activities of the nation to almost every activity or service in which any of its citizens could possibly be employed. The importance of all this is understood when it is remembered that one's occupation involves the most important of all his social relations. It is from his occupation that he must obtain the means of existence and be able to provide for his own. It is through his occu- pation that he must mainly render whatever service he may be able to render in behalf of the common good. It is by his occupation and his efficiency or inefficiency in it that he is judged and honored or discredited by his countrymen. It is by his occupation that he is able to dis- cover his own capacity and realize his own possibilities. It is by his occupation that his strength and his character are developed or his manhood undermined and his personal pos- [186] INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION sibilities are blighted. No other choice in life is more serious than the choice of an occupa- tion. There are no other social bonds, outside those of the fireside, so strong or so holy in the thought of a worthy man as the bonds with which men are bound to each other in the occu- pations in which they wear out their lives to- gether in social service. There are no collective interests through which one's citizenship can better be trusted to speak sincerely, in its effort to speak for the common good, than through the very industry or occupation by means of which one serves society. The enemies of progress are already acting politically through the industries and the oc- cupations through which they exercise despotic powers and by means of which they are able to convert a supposedly free state into a practical despotism. The political party which is to fight the bat- tle for real democracy must not only declare for industrial democracy as an end to be sought for, but it must build its own organization and [187] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM elect and control its own committees with the highest consideration given to the industrial groups, not to geographical boundary lines. Voters are now registered as to their occu- pations. In cases where an organized political party provides for a regular dues-paying mem- bership, the occupations are usually registered. It would be an easy matter to classify all citizens according to their occupations. The transport workers, the building trades, the miners, the farmers, factory workers, com- mercial workers, iron and steel workers, the housewives, the professional workers and other such occupations, would each constitute a subdivision in the party. Each such group could be given its representation accordingly. And whenever proportional representation would be established industrial representation in the legislative bodies would become inevita- ble. Committeemen, delegates and public officers elected, and subject to instruction or recall, by those employed in an industry to serve that industry in political warfare, would make an end of the power of the monopoly controlled political machine. [188] INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION Committees so elected and so controlled could never ignore the public interests of any share of the people, for then every occupa- tional group in the country would be directly represented on the committees. In such committees there could be no mutual connivance for keeping each other in office and in the joint control of party affairs. Each committeeman would be answerable to a sepa- rate industrial group and no slate could be made up by which any one candidate could offer support to another in exchange for a like service for himself. With the convention delegates and executive committeemen of a political party controlled by the industrial groups, no such party could forget its mis- sion and seek for any advantage for the party's own sake. All their activities would necessarily be given to promoting the inter- ests of the great industrial groups represented by them. In no other way could any one of the committeemen be returned to power again. Under such an arrangement, both on the committees and in public office, the real work- [189] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM ers in the occupations would be represented by men of their own choice. It would then be- come impossible for those who make a profes- sion of politics, or for lawyers and bankers, longer to so preponderate all other occupations in the public service. Under such an arrangement, the two million organized farmers and the three million other workers, who are in labor organizations, inevi- tably would be heard and the committeemen selected and the public officers chosen would speedily become less acceptable to the great private interests, because no longer subject to their control. They would, at once, become responsive to the needs and wishes of the industrial groups which would be represented by them. In the nature of the case, any party created after that manner could not become the tool of the industrial despot and, for the same rea- son, it could not escape from becoming the servant of the millions of useful people, all of whom live because of their vital and constant connection with the industries in which they are employed. [190] INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION It would be as impossible for such a party to carry on its own affairs or finally to control the state except in the interest of all those who maintain useful relations to society, as it would be for any one of the workers to live at the expense of any industry while rendering no service in the industry. It has been feared that in such an arrange- ment some few of the larger industries would be victimized by the combination of many smaller ones, or that the smaller industries would be practically voiceless because of the very great numbers of those employed as farmers, miners, or housewives, in comparison with the smaller number of commercial or professional workers. But that could hardly occur, for the reason that in all matters the referendum to the whole body of the community would be the final arbiter in all serious disputes. It should be further said that should any industry be seriously injured in its interests or any other unfairly benefited in the indus- trial republic of the future, then the desertions that would follow from the one industry and the swarm of new workers offering for the [191] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM other industry, would compel a more equitable arrangement. From all the foregoing, it is seen that the great productive undertakings, the great busi- ness monopolies, the organizations of labor, and the departments of government activity are all forming along the lines of the great industries. It is seen that the great private interests, because they act with the collective power of the industrial group monopolies are able to exert despotic control over political parties and, hence, over public affairs in their own be- half and just because the useful people have so far failed to make these industrial groups the units of organization in the control of political parties and so in the control of public affairs in their own behalf, despotism has been triumphant. It is seen how these industrial groups in the industries, the great private business monopo- lies which control the industries and the activi- ties of the government, all dove-tail into each other in the great social services of the modern state in such a way that private monopoly has become its master. [192] INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION Industrial democracy can be established by organizing those employed in the great indus- trial or occupational groups into self-govern- ing organizations. Then these self-governing organizations will become the political masters of the state. Public ownership will succeed private monopoly and these self-governing in- dustrial groups will be able to displace and to succeed the industrial depots. By this simple transition industrial despotism will be destroyed and industrial democracy will be established. This, then, is the pathway that leads to real deliverance. 1. The classification of party members ac- cording to the industrial groups. 2. The election of committeemen and the control of the party by these industrial group units within the party. 3. The public ownership of the great mo- nopolized industries and the reconstruction of governmental activities in such a way that industrial democracy will necessarily become the successor of industrial despotism. [193] PART IV THE ORDER OF ADVANCE CHAPTER XVI How To PROCEED The most serious question that any citizen can ask himself is: "What can I do?" He studies public measures and the forms and activities of government to little purpose if his studies do not lead to effective action. In matters of political importance, collec- tive action is the only effective action possible. Groups of citizens must act together to secure control of municipal, state, national and international governments if any great im- provement in public affairs is to be realized. Democracy prevails most where the groups are small, the interests involved most easily understood, and the measures proposed of most immediate concern. That is how it happens that there is most of democracy in municipal affairs, less in the state, still less in the nation and none at all in international activities. [197] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It is always true that things actually ac- complished, are more easily understood than things only proposed. It is a sound policy to undertake the easiest things first. The fundamental causes of polit- ical wrong are the same in the municipality, the state, the nation, and in world politics. The easiest way to raise an issue in the state is in the effort to follow up with the authority and the resources of the state some matter which the great municipalities in the state have carried forward to the limits of their jurisdic- tion. It is then easily seen by all that it must be taken up in the larger field and continued in the larger way if the best results are to be secured. In the same way between the state and the nation. When a state has done all that it can do in some public matter and any further ac- tion is either beyond its jurisdiction, or be- yond its resources, such a question then becomes naturally and inevitably a question in national politics. All questions of interna- tional trade, international credit and the mas- tery of the high seas, must always be questions of international, as well as of national concern. [198] HOW TO PROCEED In municipal, state, national and interna- tional politics, the causes of division, strife, partisan warfare within the states, and mili- tary undertakings between the nations, are all of them economic in their character. In the municipalities, the great controversial questions in politics arise out of the private ownership of municipal affairs, such as unim- proved ground values, street railways, water, gas, electricity, and the like, and the neces- sary economic wrong and political corruption which must always result from the conflict between the public good and the private advantage of the private owners of these monopolies. Exactly the same kind of social services are the cause of the great political controversies in the state and nation. In the same way, inter- national strife is always the result of the ef- forts of great private interests in the various nations, those of each nation through the power of their own country, seeking to extend their power to exploit to the disadvantage of competing industrial monopolies in other countries. It must be admitted that both industrial [199] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM and political despotism must remain as long as these conditions continue. It must be admitted also that no local achievement in behalf of the public ownership and democratic management of these great instruments of social service can deliver even that locality from further extor- tion in the larger enterprises which are national and international in their scope. It is impossible for any city to settle the questions involved in land monopoly, trans- portation monopoly, manufacturing monopoly, commercial monopoly, and financial monopoly, and it is equally clear that no state can solve these problems without the co-operation of the national authorities, and, finally, no nation can secure even for itself, the conditions of peace and the advantages of world-wide trade, except with the co-operation of the other nations. In consideration of all the foregoing is it not evident that whatever is to be undertaken in the improvement of social conditions ought to begin with the small affairs of the munici- pality and by each smaller achievement, ex- tend the experience, increase the power and [200] HOW TO PROCEED enlarge the public confidence in collective action for each larger task? It is impossible to be a good citizen of the world while one is a poor citizen of his own country. It is impossible to be a good citizen of the nation and at the same time a bad citi- zen within a state. It is impossible to be a good citizen as to the affairs of the state and neglect or ignore the claims of the common good in the municipality. It is impossible to be effective in one's service in any smaller political unit as a city, state or nation, without becoming directly responsible for the larger undertakings of the larger fields of action. The way to proceed in the improvement of public conditions and in the rebuilding of po- litical machinery is to act first of all in the municipality, not as a substitute for the larger tasks, but as a first battle in a long war. [201] CHAPTER XVII WHAT TO Do It was seen in Chapter Ten that universal political education is of fundamental impor- tance in the improvement of the administrative machinery of a democratic state. Public meetings reach but a few, and reach these in small groups, which are rarely repre- sentative of the whole life, even of any given community. The press is prejudiced, and sub- ject to the control of great private interests. It was seen that the most rational method of reaching all of the people with accurate and reliable information would be through the pub- lication of a bulletin, in which both sides of every controverted proposal could be fairly presented and these bulletins regularly posted to all the voters. In order to get this bulletin established in any state it will mean a prolonged campaign, while the bulletin itself would be of the great- [202] WHAT TO DO est value in promoting even the campaign for its own creation. The first thing to do in improving political machinery is to spread the information con- cerning public matters in a bulletin regularly published, widely distributed, and in which both sides of public questions of importance are regularly presented by representative and admitted spokesmen from both sides. This is altogether a practicable and possible undertak- ing. The expenditure would not be large and could be provided by voluntary contributions. Information could thus be furnished for de- bating clubs in the country schools, in all sorts of social groups, and particularly in the high schools of the state, where large numbers of people could be interested in considering the facts and arguments concerning matters of immediate public concern. References for further study, the placing of books required in the public libraries and the introduc- tion of these topics into the University Ex- tension lectures would all help in extending the public information concerning public affairs. [203] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM When once this was successfully done, the taking over of the bulletin as a part of the educational work of any state could be easily accomplished and thereafter the most impor- tant instrument for public service in a demo- cratic community would be permanently secured. In order, however, to promote any sort of undertaking, collective action will be found necessary. In order to give effective support to any measure, those favoring the measure must be organized. Placing the fullest infor- mation in the hands of all of the people will not succeed in securing the desired result unless the people are associated together for joint action as rapidly as they come into agreement concerning their convic- tions. In Chapter Fourteen it was seen that the most effective method of political organization will be found to be along the line of the great industrial groups. Just because the great mo- nopolies are also organized along the same in- dustrial lines and because all the really great political questions arise out of the conflicts be- [204] WHAT TO DO tween these industrial monopolies and the people employed in them, or the general pub- lic which is robbed by them, it follows that any effective political organization, in order to deal with these matters whether in the munici- pality, the state or nation, should be organized along the lines of the industrial groups. Nowhere in this country are political parties organized after this manner. At no time will a political party, existing in behalf of the ex- ploiters, be organized after this manner. Only an organization of useful people and for worthy purposes could be created and main- tained after this manner. Side by side with the voluntary effort to place unbiased infor- mation in the hands of all must be an effort to create a political party along the lines of these industrial interests. Parties created in the interest of labor ought to be easily reached in this particular. The party membership could be classified, and each industrial group be represented on all cen- tral bodies and committees, each by its own selected representative, subject to instruction and recall by the industrial group he would represent. [205] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM Any community which will undertake suc- cessfully these things, even in the smallest municipality, will have laid the foundation for the further work which must ultimately bring the completest victory to democracy and make impossible any further existence of despotic institutions. [206] CHAPTER XVIII CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS It has been seen that the evils of despotism are inherent in the political machinery estab- lished by the Constitution of the United States. These same unfortunate features were ex- tended to the states. It will be very difficult to go very far in the work of improvement in the machinery of legislation and of adminis- tration without making certain very important amendments to the Constitution. First of all, both in importance and in or- der of their undertaking, should be the initiative, the referendum and the recall. Where these exist they must be made more effective by universal political education and by the industrial group organization of polit- ical parties, and they must be so amended as to guard against abuses under the guise of pretended urgency. Amendments which, under the pretense of safeguarding the referendum, propose to limit [207] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM its operation are to be opposed. The only safeguard needed, and the only safeguard which can be trusted in using these measures, must be measures for securing the universal intelligence of the people of the states which adopt them. Where the initiative, the referendum and the recall have not been adopted, movements should be pushed at once for their adoption. These measures should be extended constantly to be made to apply to all matters of national and of international concern. In another place will be considered a method of forcing the issue where no provision now exists under the laws for the voluntary initia- tion of statute laws or of amendments to the constitution. Wherever the initiative and referendum do exist, steps should be taken to remove all limi- tations placed by the people in the constitu- tions which, in any way, limit the fields of action on the part of the people themselves. There ought to be placed in all the consti- tutions as soon as they can be made really democratic by the initiative, the referendum, [208] CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS and the recall, a further provision. It should provide that the state, or any political subdi- vision within the state, such as a county, a municipality, a township, a school district, or any combination of any of these, may engage in any industrial or commercial undertaking in which any corporation, partnership or nat- ural person may engage, that it may utilize the public credit for that purpose and may adopt any plans of organization and manage- ment it may elect, on the approval of the majority vote of the citizens of any such sub- division or subdivisions, at an election which shall be held by the regular authorities of any such subdivision or subdivisions on petition of a number of voters within any such territory equal to say, fifteen per cent of the total vote cast in the last preceding election. These provisions once in existence and tak- ing advantage of them where they do exist, and as fast as they shall be brought into exist- ence, will make possible the immediate beginnings of industrial democracy. Once the beginning is made, successful experiments within the limitation of small [209] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM territories will speedily justify the larger undertakings. Remaining provisions in the forms of gov- ernment intended to obstruct the public will, like the assumed and final authority of the Su- preme Court, its life tenure in office and the absurdity of an upper house in all the states and in the nation itself, would speedily dis- appear as their obstructive relations to the real activities of the people would be made more evident. No authority could be regarded any longer as supreme as against the popular will, ex- pressed in intelligent and effective majorities. Universal suffrage would speedily follow. The initiative and referendum would enable its advocates to keep the question constantly be- fore the public until universal suffrage would be given, suffrage, independent of sex, race, creed, education, property qualification or the payment of taxes. All this would follow rapidly once the initial conditions in real industrial democracy were securely established. [210] CHAPTER XIX PUBLICLY OWNED INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES It has been seen that so long as the private ownership of natural resources and the means of transportation, manufacture, storage, and exchange are subject to private monopoly ownership and control, that long industrial despotism must remain. The only effective way of escape ever under- taken to relieve the community from the mis- fortunes of any such private monopoly has been to establish a public enterprise in its place. In undertaking the creation of such public enterprises, it will be found the part of wis- dom to make the attack upon those private monopolies whose robbery is most evident, whose administrations have been most des- potic, whose position in the public mind is the most unpopular and, if possible, monopo- lies against which there are great social and moral reasons for public interference. DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It will also be found sound tactics never to present the case as simply one of prohibiting evils but always one of securing benefits. For the sake of an illustration, take those great industries which involve a great hazard of life, property, the public health or the pub- lic morals, because they deal in explosives, poi- sons, narcotics, opiates or intoxicants. Among the most infamous of the great American mo- nopolies may be named the Oil Trust, the Powder Trust, the Tobacco Trust, the Drugs and Medicine Trust and, finally, the Drink Trust. Concerning all these it may be said that they have no friends; that where they render a needed social service they do it with great loss of life, make exorbitant charges, maintain in- famous conditions of employment, and are known to be so related to the political activi- ties of the country that all the way from the corruption funds of these great industrial des- pots to their unclean and infamous political club house, the subsidized drinking saloon, which is the rallying point and the only mar- ket-place for large groups of corruptly in- fluenced and helpless voters, everywhere INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES public sentiment is against these monopolies. A reasonable proposal to establish public enterprises in the place of any or all of these without the confiscation of private property, with guaranteed re-employment for displaced labor and proper safeguards against misuse or accident, would be carried by over- whelming majorities in any portion of the country. But better even than the support which could be relied upon because of the great un- popularity of these monopolies would be the great benefits which could be promised through such public enterprises. Oil, powder, medicines, tobacco and intoxicating beverages, free from adulteration and at the actual cost of production and delivery to the final con- sumer, would bring enormous savings at once to the community, would enormously increase the demand for labor, enormously advance the standard of living, but, best of all, would re- move at once all personal motive on the part of any to endanger, to poison or to corrupt another in any of these undertakings for the sake of a private profit. [213] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM That once done and under the initiative and referendum, prohibition would prevail as far and as fast as the evil of intoxicants could be really appreciated, and an informed public could act accordingly, free from the interfer- ence of private interests, either in the enact- ment or in the administration of prohibitory legislation. Take the matter of the privately appro- priated ground rents derived from natural resources, the gift of nature, and from advan- tages of location, the achievements of society. They are enormous. They probably amount each year to more than the value of one-fourth of all the products of human labor. But any campaign simply to prevent their private ap- propriation cannot possibly have the grip nor power that a campaign would have, which would offer to use these ground rents to pro- vide a rational existence for the young, the aged and the disabled, to open up farms equipped with stock and tools as self-support- ing, "going concerns," and to build homes with all modern conveniences in the midst of parks and boulevards, with every social and educa- [214] INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES tional advantage and to place these within the easy and certain reach of all. It may be difficult to interest the millions of unemployed in theories about ground rents. It is not difficult to interest them in any rea- sonable provision for their own employment on terms where they may have for themselves all the wealth created by their own labor, with this labor reasonably equipped by funds pro- vided simply by appropriating for the com- mon good the ground rents which are pri- vately appropriated, to the demoralization of those who get them and to the impoverishment of those who create them. The same is true of the whole field of trans- portation, of mining, of manufactures and of finance. Public enterprise, once undertaken, with the powers of the state unshackled, with the resources of the nation at command, industrial despotism, which is both the motor and the mo- tive back of all forms of political despotism, would rapidly disappear, while industrial de- mocracy would become its inevitable successor at every step in the process. [215] CHAPTER XX INDUSTRIAL RErnESENTATioN The great business body, called the state, has never yet even attempted to make up a statement of its assets and liabilities. It has never yet made up, or tried to make up, a statement of its receipts and expenditures. In no such partial statement have the values cre- ated by society ever been mentioned as being the real income of society. In no such statement have those who have rendered all the service in production been listed as the only claimants against the prod- ucts and services so provided. In the bookkeeping of the modern state, the principal charges against the social income are for items entirely unearned and therefore if entered on the debit side, the national ledger could have no corresponding credit entry against which to make a balance. If the ac- countants of the national life were to enter both the debits of the exploiters and the cred- [216] INDUSTRIAL REPRESENTATION its of the producers, the immediate bankruptcy of the exploiters and the immediate solvency of the producers would be established. It is only by the crooked bookkeeping of the serv- ants of private monopoly that this result is avoided. It is by refusing the proper entries in the collective accounts of the nation that a forced and dishonest balance is made to appear. Under the public ownership of the great industries these great items could no longer be kept from the pages of the national ac- counts. As public enterprise succeeds private monopoly in the great industries, honest "pub- licity" will become a possibility. But as private ownership disappears, pri- vate control must also disappear in these indus- tries. In the same way, as public ownership is extended, public control becomes inevitable. But that means either a despotic or demo- cratic control of the industries. State ownership under a despotism still means despotic management of the state- owned industries. State ownership under a democracy must mean democratic manage- ment of the industries. Industrial democracy [217] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM must prevail in a democratic state. Hence, in- dustrial representation in the government be- comes essential to democracy just in the pro- portion that the government becomes the con- trolling factor in the industries. The public ownership of the industries pre- sents no serious problem. That has been ac- complished in many nations and in many undertakings. All of the real difficulties are found in the solution of the problems involved in the democratic management of the indus- tries. The unhampered civil rights of public employees, their special right to be heard in the industries or occupations in which they are employed, their right to be represented in the city, state and nation through the collective voice of the industries in which they are em- ployed, the citizen's right to employment in the occupation of his choice, none of these are possible without the public ownership of the great monopolized industries. The public own- ership of the great monopolized industries without these is possible only under a political despotism. Public ownership once established, then the [218] INDUSTRIAL REPRESENTATION public ledger must take account of all the services rendered in behalf of the common welfare. These items will make up the credit side of the individual's account and the debit side of the public ledger. Once public owner- ship is established, the public ledger must take account of all the services rendered or articles of use provided by society to the individual. These items will make up the credit side of the public ledger and the debit side of the indi- vidual account. Then all accounts must bal- ance and justice will at last be done. But it is not only true that both public and private accounts will at last be made both simple and honest. It is also true that the public laws, defining and enforcing personal and property rights, will be so simple that those who are expected to obey them will be able to understand them and their justice will become so evident that the enforcement of the public law will never again be made the means of making public enemies. The laws affecting the ownership and con- trol of privately owned but collectively used railways and steamship lines would make a [219] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM library, and no judge or lawyer can ever learn them well enough so that his knowledge ever gets beyond an "opinion," while the laws affecting the publicly owned and collectively used post office service can all be written on an ordinary page, and can be so easily under- stood that not a single judge or attorney at law on all the earth is able to make a living writing "opinions" of what he thinks they mean. From all the foregoing is it not agreed that in the order of advance, close on the heels of publicly owned industrial enterprises must come representation of the industrial or occu- pational groups in the management of public affairs ? As in most other political matters the place to make this beginning is in the municipality. Instead of further punishing public employees for pernicious activity in politics, give them direct representation in the city, the state, the nation. Enlarge the field of public ownership. Extend the field of industrial representation. Neither is possible in a democratic state with- out the other. To extend either is to promote [220] INDUSTRIAL REPRESENTATION the other. That is the way to industrial de- mocracy. In the modern industrial state, political democracy without industrial democ- racy cannot possibly abide. [221] CHAPTER XXI DEMOCRACY IN WORLD POLITICS There are two general notions of world pol- itics. One of them is that the way to maintain the peace is to make a large number of independ- ent nations and to make each of these so strong that all the others will be afraid of it and so, disposed to keep the peace. When any nation is too small to hope to be able to become a "terror to evil doers" in other nations, it is expected to become a de- pendent on some nation which is the "military menace of the world" or the "acknowledged mistress of the seas." This "preparedness" and these alliances in dealing with international matters are in all countries under the control of those who are seeking to get something out of other coun- tries which they expect the other countries to be willing to fight for, rather than to yield and, hence, "preparedness" for such an event DEMOCRACY IN WORLD POLITICS is everywhere the policy of "burglars," of in- dustrial monopolies, and all others who hope to do forbidden things on forbidden ground. Sometimes this policy has kept the peace within some one country by making it the mili- tary lord of all the earth and then by keeping all the earth too weak and too poor to make rebellion possible. But peace of this sort is only possible by maintaining conditions under which such a peace is even more unendurable than is war. In the end every such a world peace has always ended in bloodshed and in confusion and chaos. Even then, its ending was better than its being. The other general notion of world politics is that war is always because of insanity or be- cause someone is trying to get what does not belong to him or to keep what he ought not to have gotten. So far as these causes operate they are usu- ally mixed and always confused so that in the turmoil of battle it is never possible to get a statement of the cause or purpose of any war to which both sides will agree, and the chief [223] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM task of all the historians of all the wars has been to find out "what it was all about." Nevertheless, it is believed that if an inter- national power could be established which could give to all what really belongs to them and could prevent any from successfully taking the advantage of any other, that then the in- sane could be restrained, once the plunderers were excluded, and world peace could be main- tained. The real problem then in world politics is to establish some sort of a world agency by which those questions which might lead to war if not justly settled, may be settled, not when war is threatened, but as they arise and, hence, be- fore any threats are necessary. The great questions of international contro- versy are industrial and economic in their char- acter. But these questions always involve the industries or the occupations of the people concerned. The miners of all nations have interests in common. So do the transport workers, the manufacturers, the producers of cotton, of wool, of dairy products, of wheat and corn. The [224] DEMOCRACY IN WORLD POLITICS international organizations of labor do now have interests in common, regardless of inter- national boundary lines. All such organiza- tions are interested in raising the standards of living in all countries in order to maintain or to further advance the standards of living in their own countries. It is only the exploiters in one country who really hope to profit by the injury of the indus- tries or enterprises of other countries. The real international interests are the same with the useful workers in all the industries. So far the power to deal with international questions has been in the hands of the exploiters only. The industrial despots are the political masters of all international affairs. There is no democ- racy in world politics. Industrial despotism in any country can do nothing less than to pro- voke war with other countries. Industrial de- mocracy once established in any country, that country has henceforth no interest in the spoils of war. The achievements of industry in all countries with equitable exchange between all countries will at once become its greatest advantage. But industrial democracy cannot be estab- [ 225 ] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM lished in any country without the workers in all the industries in that country becoming at once missionaries for its like establishment in all countries, while by its example the workers in all industries in all other countries will be encouraged either to seek like advantages in their own countries or to bring their allegiance and their power to serve, to the country which has become self-governing in its industries. With the coming of the public ownership and democratic management of the great industrial and commercial monopolies, the great privately owned exploiting monopolies would utterly disappear. When they cease to exist in any country, they must necessarily cease to intrigue or to conspire in any scheme of international wrong doing which would require "prepared- ness" to destroy life, rather than to provide for the common welfare. Industrial representa- tion in any nation will at once create the public authorities within that nation best calculated to seek for peace on a basis of economic justice between all the nations. That will be the beginning of international, industrial democracy. The natural extension [226] DEMOCRACY IN WORLD POLITICS of the democratic control of the industries from the enterprises within any given nation until it shall reach and win all nations will make an end of the economic causes of war. It will create an international democratic power able to do justice to those who serve and to restrain those who attempt to make the peaceful work- ers of the world the victims of international insanity. CHAPTER XXII FORCING THE ISSUE It has been seen how the forms of partisan organization and the usual modes of procedure under constitutional forms of government to- gether with the surviving hereditary powers in the modern state, are all opposed to efficiency in the administration of the public will. A change in any of these constitutional and established forms of government cannot be undertaken without the consent of hereditary and established powers, and this consent they refuse to give. If self-government is to prevail at all, it would seem that unusual, arbitrary, and revolu- tionary measures must be undertaken. How- ever, a closer examination reveals the fact that all hereditary privileges and special powers in the state depend for their continued existence upon the continued consent of the common people. According to the forms of law, the common FORCING THE ISSUE people cannot proceed without the consent of courts, senates, cabinets and Houses of Lords, which hold their power without the consent of those most concerned. On the other hand, ac- cording to the facts, the forces and the politi- cal powers inherent in the situation, these spe- cial privileges and powers cannot continue to exist without the continued consent of those who are the special victims of these special privileges and powers. Is there any way by which this necessary consent of the many may be withheld in such a manner as to compel the few to surrender to the necessities of the many in such a way as to make the intelligent and deliberate voice of the many the law of all? Public officers are supposed to be public servants. The oath of office involves a pledge that they will be the servants of the public. Servants of the public must do the public will. The right to petition is a well-established right in all popular forms of government, but the very forms of the usual petitions carry with them the suggestion that the petitioners are subjects, not citizens, and those to whom the [229] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM petitions are addressed are masters with the power to grant or to withhold what the peti- tioners ask for. Again, the petitioners usually represent cer- tain minorities or certain influences or interests believed to be of more or less importance in so- ciety. Minorities may respectfully petition, but majorities ought not to petition. Majori- ties are masters. Masters do not petition, they command. It is a frequent practice in seeking to secure the adoption of a new law to pledge in advance candidates for the legislature to support such a measure if elected. Is it not possible instead of seeking to pledge the candidate, to proceed instead, to command those already in office and to do so with such numbers and by such impera- tive action as to make it impossible that the command should be ignored or the desired services refused? Remember that the first essential is to re- cover the power to give or to withhold the consent of the governed as related to particular measures. The democratic doctrine is that all govern- [230] FORCING THE ISSUE ments "derive their just powers from the con- sent of the governed," that is, from the consent of the governed to participate in the govern- ment, not their consent to submit to an outside and superimposed authority. This power to give or to withhold the consent of the governed is the very heart and soul of civic power. Remember, further, that with the initiative and referendum once established and made to apply to constitutional amendments as well as to the statute laws, together with the right to recall and that made to apply to judges or to the decisions of judges, there will thereafter be no occasion for forcing any issue by any means not then provided for under the law. This being the case, this chapter is only of importance where the initiative, the referendum and the recall are not yet established or where they exist under limitations of some sort which make them practically valueless. Wherever these laws do not exist, the first of all battles is to secure them. The agitation in their behalf must first be carried to a point where it is certain that the overwhelming ma- [231] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM jority of the people are ready to make battle for them. To secure a ballot previous to such an agitation, would be a misfortune rather than a victory. The law should be first prepared in the form of a constitutional amendment, and the usual effort should be made to secure its submission to the vote of the people for its adoption. If the legislature refuses or if the great private interests apply obstructive tactics in such a way as to make its submission impossible through legislative action, then as a last resort a pledge-petition could be prepared, substan- tially as follows : PLEDGE-PETITION "We, the undersigned qualified voters in the state of petition all our fellow citizens in this state to join in the use of their power as citizens to compel the submission of the fol- lowing amendment to the constitution of this state to a vote of the people, amendment being as follows : "Be it enacted (form of the amendment) . "In consideration of the refusal of the state legislature to submit this amendment to the FORCING THE ISSUE constitution to the vote of the citizens of this state, notwithstanding the overwhelming public majority known to favor this amendment, and because we deem this amendment to be of such urgent and immediate importance, we pledge ourselves, to each other and to the state never to vote for the re-election of the Governor to his present office nor to any other office for which he may at any time become a candidate unless he shall himself sign this pledge-peti- tion, and shall call a special session of the legis- lature in order to secure immediately the sub- mission of this amendment. "Nor shall we ever vote for any member of the present legislature for re-election to office or to any other office for which any such member may be, hereafter, a candidate, unless he shall sign this pledge and vote for the sub- mission of this amendment and support and vote for the amendment as a citizen. "Should such a special session be secured or should the legislature hereafter be found in session for any other purpose, then this amend- ment must be submitted without alteration or modification in any way. "We further and finally pledge ourselves to [233] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM each other never to vote for any man for any office, whatsoever, who now being a citizen of this state, shall neglect or refuse to sign this pledge and to support in every reasonable way the enactment of this law. "This pledge-petition, however, shall be binding on no one and shall be enforced in no particular whatsoever until it shall have been signed by a number of qualified voters equal to fifty-one percent of the votes polled in this state in the last election preceding the presenta- tion of this petition, after which time all of the provisions of this pledge-petition shall come into force and shall remain in force until this amendment shall have been submitted and, by the vote of the people, shall have been made a part of the constitution of this State." In considering the advantages of this method of forcing an issue in spite of political machines and in defiance of the great private interests in control of political machines, it should be borne in mind that it is proposed only as a last resort. It is admitted that pledging candidates is a frequent and effective method of procedure, [234] FORCING THE ISSUE but this must have failed, or the legislature would have submitted the amendment without a resort to such a drastic measure as is here proposed. It is admitted that politicians frequently make pledges carelessly and as carelessly aban- don them, but this pledge-petition is not taken to the politician at all except as he is also one of the citizens. It asks nothing of the Governor or of the legislators or of candidates which it does not ask of all. It is both a pledge and a petition. It is a pledge with teeth and a "petition with boots on." It is admitted that it is a great and an ex- pensive task to secure a majority of all the citizens in any state to sign any sort of a document, but it is not so great a task, nor is it so expensive as would be a resort to arms, nor is it so serious a matter as would be a further surrender to the despotism of the private interests now in control of public affairs. It must be remembered that this is the turn- ing point away from democracy and toward the [235] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM hopelessness of despotism or away from des- potism and toward the perfection and triumph of democracy. Any task is not too great for such a reward. Any sacrifice, even the horrors of civil war, would be better than so serious a surrender. Self-government is a serious undertaking. Those who would have self-government must pay the price. Liberty has never been cheaply obtained. It is almost always cheaply lost. It is absurd to suppose that free institutions are worth the gift of life itself and that the mere asking for them under such a pledge-petition could not be secured in a state fit for self control. A state which could not secure these signa- tures after a reasonable effort for so great a prize would not be an instance of freemen doomed to bondage. It would be an instance of a state where citizens were voluntary slaves unworthy of freedom. The war between democracy and despotism is to the death. If self-government cannot be secured by this program and a violent revo- lution is not to follow, then all the wrongs of despotism must at last prevail. [236] It is admitted that even good citizens do not like to sign pledges, and it is further admitted that the promise not to vote for anyone for any office at any time is a very drastic proposal. But it is better to join in the promise not to vote for those who consent to be the agents of the selfish interests as against self-government than it would be to join in organized rebellion which would be the only other alternative if some such drastic means were not adopted to avoid either bloodshed or treason to democracy. Those who want self-government ought to join in this last resort in an effort to secure a possible escape from despotic usurpations. Those who do not want self-government ought not to ask for, and if they do, they ought not to be given the support of those who do want self-government. This is nothing more than a proposal to use the full power of the elective franchise to protect free institutions against these most vicious and dangerous enemies, who through their economic power are rapidly con- verting all democratic states into political despotisms. The pledge-petition is not to go into effect [237] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM so as to be binding on anyone until a majority of all the voters interested enough in public affairs to have voted at all in a previous elec- tion shall have signed it. If any citizen still then is unwilling to be guided by a majority so obtained he cannot be at all in favor of majority rule, and has no right to ask for the consideration of those who do stand for and are ready to defend democ- racy. He is a despot, or the slave of a despot, and should be treated for what he really is. A citizen of any state who will not join in an effort to make it altogether free is by that re- fusal proven to be unfit to be the servant of a free state. [238] PART V CHAPTER XXIII A SUMMARY AND THE CONCLUSION To those who have read the foregoing: You are my fellow citizens. It may be in the city, state or nation. In any event, you are my fellow citizens in the longed for Democratic Federation of the World. You have seen how inevitable it is that there should be a government of some sort. You have seen how a peaceful, orderly and full-rounded human existence is impossible without the state, and that the final power in the state must fall to a special privileged minor- ity, or to the majority of all. You have seen that government exists be- cause of the collective interests of all the peo- ple and that it must be responsible for the pro- tection, the promotion and the administration of these interests. You have seen that any possible form of gov- ernment as related to any possible form of collective interests must be either despotic or democratic, must be made up of associated DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM freemen, or of masters and slaves, and that between these there can be no lasting compro- mise. You have seen that the greatest of all col- lective interests of the people are those which have to do with the great tasks involved in making a living. You have seen that the elec- tive franchise is nothing other than one's right to be heard and to be taken account of in the matters which concern him. You have seen that the state is only a busi- ness body seeking to transact the collective business of all the people, a business corpora- tion in which every citizen is an equal share- holder and among whose assets are all the resources of the earth. You have seen how political parties become a necessity in the collective action of those whose collective interests come into conflict with the collective interests of others. You have seen how the industrial despots have captured control through their economic power and have provided obstructive and im- possible forms of procedure both for political parties and for constitutional governments. You have seen how free institutions make [242] SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION absolutely necessary universal political educa- tion, how those who do not understand are as dangerous to the public good as those who are deliberately corrupt. You have seen how a citizenship firmly estab- lished for all, actually realized by all, and free from espionage, corruption or fraud, is essen- tial to a self-governing state. You have seen how an intelligent majority may always be made the actual masters of the state, and how that majority may enforce its will through a constant control of the activities of the government. You have seen how and why the political party can and ought to be made responsible to the great industries or occupations in which the useful people of the world are all employed, not to the private monopolies which own them, but to the people who, through these occupations, render the social services which make life pos- sible. You have seen how in the order of advance in the fight for democracy, the practical path is from the smaller to the larger things, from the municipality to the state, the nation and the world, [243] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM You have seen how a voluntary group of citi- zens can reach all the people with both sides of the great questions of current controversy and can make the many understand the need for action. You have seen what constitutional amend- ments are of fundamental importance in the extension of democracy. You have seen how publicly owned indus- trial enterprises can be undertaken and how representation in the government of the indus- trial or occupational groups in the publicly owned industrial undertakings must necessarily follow. You have seen how the international char- acter of the great industrial and commercial ac- tivities will necessarily make a world democ- racy, when once industrial democracy is suc- cessfully established anywhere. And, finally, you have seen that the people are not dependent on the consent of the indus- trial despots, the political machines, the sen- ators, "lords," or courts, nor is their overthrow by force necessary in order to make an end of their despotic sway and a real beginning of democracy. [244] SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION Those who are really interested may them- selves force the issue. The appeal does not need to be made to the bosses, kings, or rulers of the people, it can be made to the people themselves. If the people will use the power they have, they can secure all the power they ought to have. Democracy is ours for the asking. This is the pathway to deliverance. It is a peaceful revolution ; its weapons are an appeal to reason and to justice; its warfare is ad- vanced by public meetings, by the distribution of literature in which its opponents may be heard on the same terms with its friends; by a house to house and shop to shop campaign by special workers who will study and be able to explain the matters presented. It asks no one to endorse what he does not understand. It asks no one to support what he does not approve. When the power to act under the initiative of the people is denied, it asks for action only after a majority of all the people have peti- tioned all the people and have pledged their support for complete self-government. [245] DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM It nowhere asks for anything except by ma- jority rule with an enlightened majority, and that majority rule always within the reach of the people and subject to their own control. With that majority rule once secured, this program asks for no change of the laws except by popular majority. It will ask for no new public enterprises to be undertaken until ap- proved by the deliberate and informed judg- ment of the community, but as fast as it can secure this power by this means and the suc- cessful doing of the smaller things shall justify the larger tasks, it will extend industrial de- mocracy until self-governing institutions shall be established in all the collective interests of mankind. This is the way to deliverance. Democracy is ours for the asking. [246] THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF SOCIAL ECONOMY BERKELEY CAL. COURSES OF STUDY Classes in History, Economics, Current Problems, and in Public Speaking, conducted by Correspondence. LECTURE COURSES Local Courses of Lessons, or Lectures, or Special Campaigns in behalf of Municipal Betterment in the Public Ownership of Public Utilities, or in the Exten- sion of Self-Government in Local Matters. PUBLICATIONS Books by Walter Thomas Mills THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 640 pages, 50,000 sold PRICE Single copies $2. 50 postpaid. 10 copies to one address, purchasers paying the freight, $1.50 each and a free copy to the local public library. DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM (Just off the press) 260 pages. An up-to-date discussion of the most urgent problems of Current Politics. PRICE Single copies, $1.25 postpaid. 10 copies to one address, purchaser paying the freight, $10.00, with a free copy to the local library. ADDRESS HILDA F. MILLS, Secretary INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF SOCIAL ECONOMY Berkeley, Calif. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE By WALTER THOMAS MILLS, M.A. This Is a book of six hundred and forty pages. It covers the whole field of labor in its Historic Development in the In- dustrial Organization and in its Political Possibilities. It states and answers more than a thousand questions which are mat- ters of dally discussion and it is written in a style so plain and simple that anyone who can read can easily understand it. CONTENTS Part 1 Clearing the Ground. Part 2 The Evolution of Capitalism. Part 3 The Evolution of Socialism. Part 4 Social and Economic Questions of Con- troversy. Part 5 Current Problems of Public Interest. Part 6 Political Organization and Propaganda. Eugene V. Debs says: "If yoj want to know how terrible the struggle for existence has been through ten thousand years of human history and human misery if you want to know how dependent the work- ingman is and how he became so helpless if you want to kr.ow the only way of escape from poverty and oppression and know it so well you can tell it again to others then get and read THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE, by Walter Thomas Mills, and you will not only know these things, but you can never be silent about them until the powers which sanction them are overthrown forever." Fifty thousand sold. More than 20,000 sold under a guaranty that after reading the book the money would be returned if the buyer was dissatisfied with his purchase and not one book was ever returned. In cloth binding #2.50 postpaid In paper binding 1.00 postpaid Ten copies in paper binding 50c each, in cloth $i.So each, purchaser paying freight, AND FREE CLOTH BOUND COPY for the local or Public Library. THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF SOCIAL ECONOMY Berkeley, Calif. M THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482 A 000 865 248 9 |i| ! 'I I 1 I II I